Why Death is Essential to Life

Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London, who writes for the Economist, Nature, the Financial Times, the Atlantic and Natural History (and now the New York Times) has written a superb post on death. The role of death in nature. Why death is essential to life. In fact indispensable.

The post is so good, it makes you want to try it. Not permanently, of course.

The one question she doesn't answer is why do we humans focus so much on the hereafter. Or at least on living indefinitely -- viz Ted Williams. Of course, she doesn't explain why we have an imagination, either. But that is surely for another post.