Can the concept of evolution tell us who we are?
pp. 149-159
in: Robert Zwilling (ed), Natural sciences and human thought, Berlin, Springer, 1995Abstract
In all civilizations and cultures, mythological descriptions of the origin of the world and humanity are the starting-point for efforts to understand the existence of the world and its inhabitants. Sometimes they create very beautiful, poetic pictures, but, however beautiful, such mythological versions can only contribute to explaining the world if they contain at least some empirical observations. The interpretations provided by myths are more an expression of the strong demand for understanding and meaning that we all share than a tangible contribution to the questions they actually try to answer.