BBC News (and others) used a very interesting word to describe the growth of galaxies in their article. Will any sane person claim that cannibalism in nature justifies cannibalism among humans? Will anyone call for suppressing this theory of galactic cannibalism because it may encourage cannibalism among humans?
Claims like these are made all the time. Sane, intelligent people, in all their seriousness, have claimed that because "survival of the fittest" happens in nature, it has to be ethical. Especially if you completely misunderstand the meaning of "fittest". Or, far more popularly, it is claimed that the idea of natural selection must be wrong, and even if it is true it should be suppressed, because it will inevitably lead "fit" humans to exterminate "unfit" ones.
Maybe the example of galactic cannibalism is too extreme. Everyone should be able to see through the metaphor. But what about gravity? A consequence of gravity is that everyone on Earth is subject to a downward acceleration. Does this mean that it is unethical to be anywhere higher than the ground floor (1st floor in the U.S. and elsewhere)? Is flying in an airplane a sin?
Of course the c-word does not appear once in the abstract of the original paper. I don't have access to the full text but it might as well not appear there either. But, guess what. "Survival of the fittest" did not appear in the first four editions of the "Origin of Species". And it was supposed to be a metaphor too.
