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That Its History Forms: Although literary forms like the fu, the yiieh-fu, and the ku shih grew so luxuriantly that its history forms belles-lettres began to form a major category of its own and individual genius shone more brilliantly in this field than ever before, the writings of the great Han historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-?87 B. c.) are also important. In the classical age, history had consisted of the fragmentary record of events or of a mixture of anecdote, oratorical harangue, and short didactic discourse. With Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Historical Memoirs (Shih Chi), history developed into lucid, systematic narrative.
The ground sloths were once classified as a separate group from the two living tree sloths, but it is now thought that its history forms each of the tree sloths represents a line of previously ground-dwelling sloths. The complex adaptive characteristics of the feet have led to a theory that its history forms sloths were tree-dwellers in their very early history in South America, later became ground-dwelling forms, and then returned to the trees. It is also possible that its history forms there have always been tree-dwelling forms.
Clearly the discovery of life, or past life, on these or on any other body in the solar system would be one of the major finds of man's history. Such a discovery would have ramifications for all the intellectual disciplines, not the least of which would be philosophy and theology. And it would also have special interest for science. Biologists could then begin to construct a general theory of life forms. This cannot be done now, because there is only one type of life available for study. Also, the finding of even simple forms of life on another planet within our solar system would increase the likelihood that its history forms intelligent life might exist on another planet turning about a distant star. |
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