Organisms Quotes - Page 8

• Maybe philosophical problems are hard not because they are divine or irreducible or meaningless or workaday science, but because the mind of Homo sapiens lacks the cognitive equipment to solve them. We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness ot to answer any question we are capable of asking.

  Steven Pinker

  Philosophical, Angel, Mind

  "How the Mind Works". Book by Steven Pinker, 1997.

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• Film becomes a living organism. After awhile, it begins to tell you what it needs and you're usually best listening.

  David Slade

  Listening, Needs, Film

  Source: collider.com

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• No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.

  John Steinbeck

  Colony, Understood, Comprehending

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• There is no differentiation between all living things: trees, river, animals, and humans. We are all one interdependent organism, so our focus may seem broad but each element interacts with the other. We have so many phenomenal eyes, skills, and hands on deck. It's mind-blowingly exciting.

  Ian Somerhalder

  Eye, Animal, Hands

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• Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.

  Alan Watts

  Unity, Hallucinations, Serious

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.112, New World Library

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• If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job. But here's an extrememly salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is. We may be all there is. It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

  Bill Bryson

  Lonely, Jobs, Fate

  "Bill Bryson’s ‘Really Short History of Nearly Everything’ Is The Dream Gift Book For Every Curious Kid" by Jesse Kornbluth, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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• When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

  Alan Watts

  Communication, Unique, Men

  Alan Watts (2017). “Psychotherapy East & West”, p.7, New World Library

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• In the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical variability, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources are at a minimum, their maximum is reached in the mind of man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature is a summary, an epitome of the world.

  Chauncey Wright

  Men, Order, Intelligence

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• A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.

  Andy Grove

  Business, Focus, Skins

  "Andy Grove: What I've Learned" by Mike Sager, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• The gifts of microscopes to our understanding of cells and organisms is so profound that one has to ask: What are the gifts of the microscopist? Here is my opinion. The gift of the great microscopist is the ability to Think with the eyes and see with the brain. Deep revelations into the nature of living things continue to travel on beams of light.

  Daniel Mazia

  Eye, Thinking, Light

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• An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Stars, Science, Would Be

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• Biology is a science of three dimensions. The first is the study of each species across all levels of biological organization, molecule to cell to organism to population to ecosystem. The second dimension is the diversity of all species in the biosphere. The third dimension is the history of each species in turn, comprising both its genetic evolution and the environmental change that drove the evolution. Biology, by growing in all three dimensions, is progressing toward unification and will continue to do so.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Ecosystems, Organization

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• It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Errors, Perfection

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2004). “Evolution And Ethics”, p.247, 1st World Publishing

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• It is certainly true in the United States that there is an uneasiness about certain aspects of science, particularly evolution, because it conflicts, in some people's minds, with their sense of how we all came to be. But you know, if you are a believer in God, it's hard to imagine that God would somehow put this incontrovertible evidence in front of us about our relationship to other living organisms and expect us to disbelieve it. I mean, that doesn't make sense at all.

  Francis Collins

  Mean, Science, Imagination

  "Dr. Francis Collins: ‘There Is An Uneasiness’ About Evolution". www.huffingtonpost.com. January 25, 2014.

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• The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Law, Keys

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• It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right.

  Lyall Watson

  Rain, Rivers, Water

  Lyall Watson (1987). “The dreams of dragons: riddles of natural history”, William Morrow & Co

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• Life processes take place in an aqueous medium. All organisms are composed mostly of water, whether they dwell in the oceans, lakes, and rivers, or on the land. Because the physical and chemical properties of water are well suited to the requirements of life, it is no accident that life is a water-based phenomenon.

  Robert E. Lee

  Rain, Ocean, Lakes

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• The chemical differences among various species and genera of animals and plants are certainly as significant for the history of their origins as the differences in form. If we could define clearly the differences in molecular constitution and functions of different kinds of organisms, there would be possible a more illuminating and deeper understanding of question of the evolutionary reactions of organisms than could ever be expected from morphological considerations.

  Ray Lankester

  Science, Animal, Differences

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• The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Men, Organization

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• Romance is a universally unspoken language understood by all living organism on this planet except heterosexual men.

  Steve Kluger

  Men, Romance, Language

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• There is a deep interconnectedness of all life on earth, from the tiniest organisms, to the largest ecosystems, and absolutely between each person.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Ecosystems, Earth, Persons

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• Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—-to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.

  Alan Watts

  Intelligent, Technology, Men

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.112, New World Library

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• There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.

  John Green

  Worry, Consciousness, Oblivion

  John Green (2008). “An Abundance of Katherines”, p.225, Penguin

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• I don't know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, 'Why don't you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?' And I always say, well, when you say that, you've also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that's got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate.

  David Attenborough

  Atheist, Believe, Butterfly

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• No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Long, Missing, Trying

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