Hello All

An interesting e mail from Thom Bradley (as always). I am wondering if we
are not falling into our normal trap - we see everything from our own
viewpoint. Possibly a good place to start but it is not the sine quo non.

Maybe the bee has a method of communicating with the world totally unknown
to us and which may remain forever a closed book. We are perhaps in the same
position vis a vis the bee, as we would be in the presence of an extra
terrestrial.

After all, the bee is on the planet about 40 million years longer than us.
It was practicing complex navigation, an awareness of chemistry and other
'scientific' feats, when we were grunting and fighting with our bare hands.

Another interesting thing about the bee is that we understand that it
underwent considerable change during its first 10 million years on the
planet. And then the changes stopped. Man is on the planet for about 1
million years. Mind you it may be a moot point as to whether we have really
developed in that time - we are still communicating in much the same way and
the fighting has remained our central activity!.

So an organism that was 'developing' for 1 million years is trying to
understand one that was developing for 10 million years and has spent the
last 30 million years happy with that development. Trying to learn about the
bee is praiseworthy - but comparing it to our methods is crass arrogance in
my view.



Sincerely
Tom Barrett
49 South Park, Foxrock
Dublin 18
Ireland