I can't remember much about it, but the first chapter in my Botany book in college was that reading from Aristotle. It has always stuck with me. I've been on these threads for a wile now (not as long as you, I'm sure). Notice how plants are rarely mentioned? Yet they make up a majority of the biosphere.
i am firmly convinced that evolution would mean squat to creationists if it didn't include man.
No need to go into that now.
You're exactly right about evolution, man, and creationists. Two Catholic Popes, Pius XII and John Paul II, both had no problems with evolution at all ... as long as man was considered a special case. Both Popes defined "special case" in such a way as to allow Catholics, if they wished, to accept evolutionary theory and not be in conflict with the church. So there's no doubt that a theory about everything but man would hardly have made a ripple.
But I'm with Mark Twain on the matter. Ichy provided the Twain quote on this thread already.