History Of Life Quotes - Page 2

• If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy - Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Years, Joy, Astronomy

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.142, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Fairy tales and myths are forms of cultural storage for the natural history of life.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Fairy Tale, Natural, Form

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• In our struggle to understand the history of life, we must learn where to place the boundary between contingent and unpredictable events that occur but once and the more repeatable, lawlike phenomenon that may pervade life's history as generalities.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Struggle, Events, May

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.402, Harvard University Press

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• Man did not address his inquiries to the earth on which he stood until a remarkably late stage in the development of his desire for knowledge. And the answers he received to the questions, "Where do I come from?", "What is man?", although they made him poorer by a few illusions, gave him in compensation a knowledge of his past that is vaster than he could ever have dreamed. For it emerged that the history of life was his history too.

  Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald

  Men, Past, Desire

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• If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially peabrained dinosaurs.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Moon, Skeletons, Museums

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• Bought the Vegematic and Pocket Fisherman, too, illuminated illustrated history of Life, and Boxcar Willie.

  Steve Goodman

  Musical, Pockets, Fisherman

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• The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Progress, Expansion

  Stephen Jay Gould (1991). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Important, Roles, Problem

  Phillip E. Johnson (2000). “Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law and Culture”, Intervarsity Press

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• Can I pay any higher tribute to a man [George Gaylord Simpson] than to state that his work both established a profession and sowed the seeds for its own revision? If Simpson had reached final truth, he either would have been a priest or would have chosen a dull profession. The history of life cannot be a dull profession.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Science, Men

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• Cancer is not something confined to human beings. It's found in all multi cellular organisms where the adult cells proliferate, so it's widespread in the biosphere. It's a phenomenon that is deeply related to the history of life itself, so by studying cancer I think we can illuminate the history of life itself and vice versa.

  Paul Davies

  Cancer, Thinking, Cells

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The public image of dinosaurs is tainted by extinction. It's hard to accept dinosaurs as a success when they are all dead. But the fact of ultimate extinction should not make us overlook the absolutely unsurpassed role dinosaurs played in the history of life.

  Robert T. Bakker

  Roles, Dinosaurs, Extinction

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• The history of life was not the bumbling progress - the very English, middle-class progress - Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution.

  Salman Rushdie

  Class, Progress, Revolution

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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