124 quotes
If I could have those sixty seconds within Bradypus... would I not receive a plea for humans to pause, reassess - and above all, slow down?
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)
Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)
If a man dies of cancer in fear and despair, then cry for his pain and celebrate his life. The other man, who fought like hell and laughed in the end, but also died, may have had an easier time in his final months, but took his leave with no more humanity.
Full House (1996)
Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?
Eight Little Piggies (1993)
I’m a profound anti-romantic. Romanticism is dangerous. Romanticism untrammeled by intellect gives rise to fascism after all.
Life is inherently ambiguous; baseball games pit pure good against abject evil. Even Saddam Hussein must have committed one act of kindness in his life, but what iota of good could possibly be said for aluminum bats or the designated hitter rule?
An overtly expressed political commitment does not debar a scientist from viewing nature accurately—if only because no honest scientist or effective political activist would be foolish enough to advance a program in evident discord with the world as we find it.
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)
[C]ontingency is a thing unto itself, not the titration of determinism by randomness.
Yesterday’s seer is today’s bore.
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)
Our indirect methods have taught us a mountain of things about horses, but if you wished to learn even more, would you rather be Whirlaway in the stretch, than interview Eddie Arcaro afterwards?
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)
Science is not “organized common sense”; at it most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition.
Ever Since Darwin (1977)
Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of would-be tacklers in an oddly zigzagged path toward a goal, not a horse thundering down the flat.
Eight Little Piggies (1993)
I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy.
Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower" animals with simple nervous systems arise as genetic products of natural selection, then human behavior should have a similar basis.
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)
No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.
I Have Landed (2002)
Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world.
The common error lies in failing to recognize that apparent trends can be generated as by-products, or side consequences, of expansions and contractions in the amount of variation within a system, and not by anything directly moving anywhere.
Full House (1996)
I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms.
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)
All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned.