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Quotes from The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact — Colin Tudge

born 1943 England

← All quotes by Colin Tudge

14 quotes

The crucial notion that the world has not always been the way it is now.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

Every society has cause to know that the beneficence of the Earth cannot be taken for granted.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

The effect of natural selection over time is to change the composition of the gene pool.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

A knowledge of our own history is a significant part of culture and, at present, that knowledge is absurdly curtailed.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

Natural selection is not concerned with dignity—only with reproductive success.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

Nature is endlessly inventive, yet endlessly reinvents.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

Nature’s rules are universal, and nature has no taste.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

The point is simply to realize that the Earth does indeed behave in extraordinary ways—and incredulity is no defense.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

In short, we are innately bad at introspection.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

I find that as my knowledge grows, so my appreciation deepens.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

In practice, the attempt to relate the evidence on the ground directly to the Noachian Flood was more or less abandoned after the 1820s.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

We cannot claim to take the environment seriously until we acknowledge that a million years is a proper unit of political time. That is the general lesson of history.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

The agricultural systems of the world are not actually designed to feed people....If the prime concern of the human species was to feed people, then we would do things very differently.

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

In particular, to suggest that the creature which is measurably superior in any particular respect is ipso facto morally superior is bad science (since it is not in the brief of science to make such judgments) and also bad moral philosophy (since this is merely a variation on the deeply suspect theme of “might makes right”).

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact (1995)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Colin Tudge (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.