ABSTRACT
Both Darwin and Aristotle tried to correct an earth-avoiding bias that has always slanted our scientific tradition. This bias did not, of course, dictate a total neglect of phenomena outside human life. But it did dictate a strangely selective way of attending to them, a much greater willingness to notice things in the heavens than things on the earth. Scholars looked for system and significance in the stars much more readily than in terrestrial things.
