![]() The idea that humans are not animals makes precisely as much sense as the idea that the earth is not a planet, or the sun not a star. Post-Darwin, it is more natural to think of humans as a subset of the category animal. But after Darwin, the distinction suddenly seems arbitrary - as arbitrary as the equally workable distinction between, say, turtles and non-turtles. Certainly, the human-animal distinction is still workable after all, we rarely make errors in assigning entities to one category or the other. We are one animal species among countless millions. ![]() We now know that we all came about through the same process, and our common origin suggests that we will have more in common with other animals than we previously imagined. ![]() It challenges the very idea that the inhabitants of this planet can be meaningfully divided into humans and animals in the first place. ![]() But Darwin's theory does more than simply stress our kinship with the animals. ![]()
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