Adaptation and Animals...

I consider writing scientific papers as one of the most noble thing that you can do in your lifetime. Have you ever asked yourself, what's the major difference between humans and animals ? We all might give different answers to this question, but the essence of all the answers remains same.
{For the sake of this discussion, I am considering Animals and Humans as two different entities}
Humans have an higher ability to modify the environment they live compared to other animals. Now, I am sure, my answer should have surprised you because it was not the same that you were thinking. Don't hurry, I can give you reasons to justify my answer but i want you to think about it.
Just to make you easier, one such example "Humans conquered the darkness of night with the innovation of "lights". Have you seen any other animal that innovated an artificial system for conquering darkness ?"
Now, that brings us to one major question. Should we modify the environment we live around or should we adapt to it ? Almost all animals have a higher tendency to adapt to the environment or become extinct. But, its the humans that have got a great tendency to modify/change the environment they live in, such that it becomes easier,safe and pleasurable to sustain. You don't see an animal building dams, you don't see an animals trying to make spaceships but you do find Humans spending lot of effort in innovating, discovering things that are not inbuilt in the environment. Ofcourse, even animals do try to innovate in some way or the other but human have a higher tendency to do it and that's what makes the difference. Hence, I can say that the ability of humans to innovate and modify the environment differentiates them from the millions of animals. Innovation is harmful when it modifies the environment to cause destruction, however most of the innovations that have been done have benefited humans.

When I use the term "environment", its not just confined to the "enivronment that surrounds us", it means every possible thing that exists around us. In that generic sense, I can include stars, planets, galaxies and every possible thing that exists in this universe as part of our environment. Actually, the definition for environment depends upon the thoughts of the individual. For a school kid, the environment is all that happens in the school, for the Prime Minister of the nature, the environment is all the things that occur in the nation. And so on, the scope and size of environment increases. Undoubtedly, for a scientist, the environment is whole Universe. Everything that's existing in the universe should be part of his/her environment.
In our day to day life, we come acrosss hundreds of modifications that we have made to the exisiting environment. Today we are using computers, refrigerators, wireless phones, watches, etc all represent the modifications we have made to the environment. If you probe deeper into this scenario, you will find Humans have been making modifications ever since their evolution. Today we wear clothes, that's again a modification. Have you seen any species other than humans that wears all the well designed clothes ? That's the reason I say animals have higher tendency to adapt to the environment whereas humans have higher tendency to modify.
Probably, questions that are puzzling across your brain at the moment is, why am I saying all this ? How is it related to papers ? Be pateint, I will answer them all.
Every modification that humans have been making requires innovation of some kind. From Wheels to Nuclear Bombs, there have been people who have spend their creativity in innovating and modifying the environment around us. Even though I have been using the term "humans" all through out this discussion, not every human has contributed to the modifications. In fact, most  of the humans have just waited for others to innovate. Ofcourse, we can easily equate them to animals.

Nonetheless, we are the most innovative species created by God and we have to keep up that reputation forever. And the only way to keep up that reputation is to continuously innovate and change the environment around us. If we fail to do so then there isn’t much difference between humans and animals. I have heard many people saying that “it’s not possible for everyone to do innovation”. My friends you are absolutely wrong. When you claim that everybody is equal then why can’t everyone do innovation? Innovation can be anything, it can be just a simple thing in your day to day life which doesn’t significantly impact others or it can be a discovery of lifetime. But a Human has to do innovations of some kind in this lifetime just to prove that he has lived his/her life like a human rather than an animal.
Now you might ask me, what’s innovation? My friends, I again reiterate, it could be ‘anything’. My mom makes a special chicken dishes for me which you won’t find anywhere. I call that as innovation as it’s impacting my life and those dishes are not found anywhere. At this point, I would also like to make it clear, I am not calling the dishes as innovation as my mom has an ability to create some hypothetical taste that pleases me, but the fact that “they are not found anywhere”. The recipe used in it is “invented” by my mom. So that makes an INNOVATION. In other words, innovation is about making something theoretical or practical which was so far unknown to mankind. Every time we find a new thing, the human race goes one step away from being an animal whereas every second you waste in adapting to existing environment; you are marching one step closer towards being an animal.

October 26 2:18 AM 2007