We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.
Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism–and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.
We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose for depicting the cosmos in miniature.
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information it is a creative human activity.
Bless all the women of this world who nurture our heritage while too many man rush off to kill for ideals that might now be deeply and personally held, but will often be viewed as repugnant by later generations.
Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our ‘noble’ traits as well?
Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die.
Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.
This new consensus seemed so compelling that Ernst Mayr, the dean of modern Darwinians, opened the ashcan of history for a deposit of Geoffrey’s ideas about anatomical unity.
Our planet is not fragile at its own timescale and we, pitiful latecomers in the last microsecond of our planetary year, are stewards of nothing in the long run.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Revolutions usually begin as replacements for older certainties, and not as pristine discoveries in uncharted terrain.
In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
Death is the ultimate enemy – and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.
What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria.
With copious evidence ranging from Plato’s haughtiness to Beethoven’s tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.
If I don’t make it, I’ll be very sad that there are things I didn’t do, but I’m happy that I’ve done what I have.