RIP George Clarkson
George Clarkson was my step great uncle who I saw once a year at Thanksgiving. However, despite not being very close, in his death he is kind of an inspiration for me. I have never met anyone before who has accepted death like him. He has been sick with cancer and bed-ridden for weeks. Despite this, he requested on Christmas day that he be moved (against the wishes of his nurses and other caretakers) to his son's house because he wanted to spend his last Christmas with family. He knew he was dieing but he accepted it and just wanted to spend his last days with the people he loved. A devout Catholic, he was sure he was going to someplace better. I certainly hope so, he was a good man and deserved it. Anyhow, this got me thinking about the science of death. And it left me with one question that I can't figure out an answer for. If science is right, and evolution and natural selection explain how life came to be, what is the biological purpose of aging? Why does the body go through a process that eventually leads to it's own destruction? Shouldn't aging have disappeared through natural selection by now? Even if not in humans, surely some animal on earth would have lost the genetic code that causes aging? If natural selection truly explains everything, why aren't humans biologically immortal? Sure, people would eventually die as we are killed by predators or other humans. And certainly diseases would still abound. But why does the body make itself more susceptible to disease as we get older? I don't know why I'm writing all of this, it just came to my mind and I wanted to get it out. And who knows, maybe one of you with a more science-based education has an answer for me. Enough of that though. Sorry for the morbidity of this post, maybe I'll post something happier in here soon.