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8b0cbd1
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Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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evolution
nature
wonder
science
inspirational
biology
grandeur
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Charles Darwin |
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5b2185a
|
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
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universe
science
life
biology
humans
|
Bill Bryson |
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9d7b84b
|
In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels
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|
thoughts
emotion
science
love
inspirational
neuropsychology
biology
|
Daniel Goleman |
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5d332f2
|
...But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of . Let each man hope and believe what he can.
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|
evolution
profound
science
beneficence
omnipotent
biology
tolerance
design
evidence
misery
isaac-newton
newton
|
Charles Darwin |
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6d6de67
|
In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.
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nature
biology
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Richard Preston |
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baa604a
|
Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads
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empathy
free-will
morality
compassion
choice
science
wisdom
inspirational
reductionism
biology
determinism
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Clarence Darrow |
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bb119d4
|
"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of
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|
metaphor
history
science
illimitable
inexplicability
principia
solidity
origin-of-species
possessions
intellectual
business
biology
charles-darwin
goal
justification
darwin
infinite
knowledge
ocean
isaac-newton
newton
unknown
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Thomas Henry Huxley |
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9932efd
|
A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!
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science
god-delusion
biology
|
Richard Dawkins |
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5cd66a5
|
This century will be called 's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. . Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer , and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of --a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; . Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.
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|
evolution
myth
true
nature
reason
fear
science
atonement
origin-of-species
orthodox-christianity
false
clergy
garden-of-eden
original-sin
orthodox
biology
charles-darwin
fact
investigation
geology
dogma
survival-of-the-fittest
darwin
genius
england
ignorance
superstition
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Robert Green Ingersoll |
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88c6339
|
"Even if we have a reliable criterion for detecting design, and even if that criterion tells us that biological systems are designed, it seems that determining a biological system to be designed is akin to shrugging our shoulders and saying God did it. The fear is that admitting design as an explanation will stifle scientific inquiry, that scientists will stop investigating difficult problems because they have a sufficient explanation already. But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term "junk DNA." Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as "junk" merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the , John Bodnar describes how "non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development." Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.
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|
evolution
science
coccyx
human-appendix
human-coccyx
junk-dna
scientific-prediction
vestigial-organs
dna
biology
purpose
id
intelligent-design
darwinism
|
William A. Dembski |
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1d79afa
|
Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.
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|
perfection
science
optimisation
stephen-jay-gould
biology
optimization
id
intelligent-design
|
William A. Dembski |
|
3bd0efd
|
Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.
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|
evolution
science
chemical-evolution
origin-of-information
origin-of-life
biology
id
intelligent-design
darwinism
|
Paul Davies |
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3ead683
|
Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life--the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids--is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.
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|
science
carbon
corn
plants
photosynthesis
biology
food
|
Michael Pollan |
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54935d0
|
"The male frog, in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs - it's been documented - discover that if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier, and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." "So?" "So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid." "Your analogy falls down when it comes to female artists," said Jimmy. "They're not in it to get laid. They'd gain no biological advantage from amplifying themselves, since potential mates would be deterred rather than attracted by this sort of amplification. Men aren't frogs, they don't want women who are ten times bigger than them." "Female artists are biologically confused," said Crake." --
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evolution
humor
biology
attraction
humans
|
Margaret Atwood |
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f1710e2
|
This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only purpose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astronomical phenomena, 'Mere dead matter' was one of their favourite phrases.
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|
universe
intelligence
biology
exobiology
matter
dead
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
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7ea355f
|
The virus altered the the eye of the beholder. That this change came at the expense of the beheld suggests that beauty in nature does not necessarily bespeak health, nor necessarily redound to the benefit of the beautiful.
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botany
biology
|
Michael Pollan |
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469c7fb
|
Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter of each gigantic cell trailed a continuous loop of these bright green dots. They spun . . . they pulsed, pressed, and thronged . . . they shone, they swarmed in ever-shifting files around and around the edge of the cell; they wandered, they charged, they milled, raced . . . they flowed and trooped greenly . . . All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts . . . If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish's tail.
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|
nature
science
biochemistry
lifeblood
page-127-8
plant
biology
fact
know
chemistry
|
Annie Dillard |
|
c829b63
|
The attention given to the side of the head which has received the injury, in connection with a specific reference to the side of the body nervously affected, is in itself evidence that in this case the ancient surgeon was already beginning observations on the localization of functions in the brain.
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|
ancient-medicine
hieroglyphic
injuries
medical-history
neuroscience
biology
brain
ancient-egypt
|
James Henry Breasted |
|
2ff55b9
|
"Marian's eyes absolutely blaze. To meet them is to have a shock of contact as if they were electrically charged. "Now you see? You wondered what was in whale's milk. Don't you know now? The same thing that's in a mushroom spore so small you need a microscope to see it, or in gophers, or poison oak, or anything else we try to pave under or grub out, or poison. There isn't good life and bad life, there's only life. Think of the force down there, just telling things to get born!"
|
|
nature
humanity
life
biology
birth
|
Wallace Stegner |
|
bdedd92
|
If our ethical code makes a purely arbitrary distinction between humans and all other species, then we have a code based on naked selfishness devoid of any higher principle.
|
|
evolution
humanity
science
animal-welfare
biology
research
morals
|
Jared Diamond |
|
3154912
|
Once a small planet is discovered, astronomers try to determine which category it belongs to. This is like biologists trying to classify a new animal as either being a mammal or reptile.
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|
astronomy
biologists
biology
sarcasm
|
Michio Kaku |