Even Fonzie admitted when he was wrwrwrwrooo… wrong.

Everyone is supposed to define what they are thankful for on this day.  I hate that.  But I’ll play along just because I have something this time.  Yesterday I already wrote about how much I love my family so I’m skipping them this time around.  I can only get so mushy in a 24 hour period.

Today I’m thankful for the ability to adapt.  The ability to change.  I am thankful that science has not adopted the hard and fast rigidity that other institutions have so readily embraced.  Resistance to change is only going to destroy you.  You have to change with the newly discovered facts or you will get left behind.

Darwin was wrong.  That’s a bit of a strong statement but its there for impact.  Read on.

I just read a story on how scientists have gotten a major curveball thrown at them by a small water-filled bubble… Gromia Sphaerica is kicking evolutionary science in the balls this week.  They are making paleontologists re-evaluate the link between Pre-Cambrian life and the Cambrian Explosion.  It turns out that these single-celled critters can move and more importantly, they leave trails.  That’s not supposed to happen.  So all those fossilized trails that we have that we are looking for a missing critter that made them because we didn’t think old G. Sphaerica could roll around on its own?  Now we think we know.

Being able to admit you are wrong or that you don’t know is a great thing.  I’d much rather see someone say they were wrong than grasp at straws and try to make the facts fit their story.  Science can do that.  Science MUST admit when it’s wrong.  We look at something, we study it and test it.  Then we say we think it happened this way.  When it turns out to be wrong, we scrap the entire thing and start over.

I am thankful for the ability to be wrong and the ability to embrace new things.

Bottom left, G. Sphaerica and his magic trail.