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E Quotes

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All E Quotes

“Even if we give first priority to the destruction of terrorist networks, and even if we succeed, there are still governments that could bring us great harm. And there is a clear case that one of these governments in particular represents a virulent threat in a class by itself: Iraq. As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table.”

“Even if we grant that digital natives think and learn somewhat differently than older generations, we may be doing them a disservice to de-emphasize 'legacy' content such as reading, writing, and logical thinking, or to say that the methodologies we have used in the past are no longer relevant... Digital immigrants and natives alike are bombarded with vast volumes of information in today's electronic society, which... calls for an even greater emphasis on critical thinking and research skills -- the very sort of 'legacy' content that teachers have focused on since classical times”

“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 Journal of Theoretical Biology, 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. Or consider vestigial organs that later are found to have a function after all. Evolutionary biology texts often cite the human coccyx as a "vestigial structure" that hearkens back to vertebrate ancestors with tails. Yet if one looks at a recent edition of Gray’s Anatomy, one finds that the coccyx is a crucial point of contact with muscles that attach to the pelvic floor. The phrase "vestigial structure" often merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. The human appendix, formerly thought to be vestigial, is now known to be a functioning component of the immune system.”

“Even if we ignore the 'non-theoretical' knowledge which we acquire through experience (such as the knowledge of what something tastes like) and concentrate on theoretical knowledge, there is no good reason to think that physics can literally give the theory of everything. Here I want to be really pedantic. Although everything may be subject to physical law, not everything can be explained or described in physical terms. Physics has literally nothing to say about society, morality and the mind, for example - but of course these are parts of 'everything'.”

“Even if we naively try to explain the immeasurable spaces, energies, and galaxies of the Universe with the so-called dark matter and dark energy, it is hard to comprehend, regardless of all possible physical laws and laws of compression or contraction that such waste energies can fit into a tiny “spot.” If energy is indestructible, this beginning will prove the opposite based on its smallness. If something can disappear into nothing, it must be “destructible,” regardless of our conceptions.”

“Even if we never reach the stars by our own efforts, in the millions of years that lie ahead it is almost certain that the stars will come to us. Isolationism is neither a practical policy on the national or cosmic scale. And when the first contact with the outer universe is made, one would like to think that Mankind played an active and not merely a passive role-that we were the discoverers, not the discovered.”

“Even if we planted a tree on every square yard available in the planet by the end of the century we would only capture at most 10 percent of the CO2 we need to reduce. This does not mean that we should not plant trees; we should, for biodiversity's sake, and for our long-term future together with the other species.”

“Even if we proclaim that life equates to existence, the word life, irrespective of its correct and applicable meanings on various levels, is still insufficient to describe or relate to the totality of life. In the terminological sense, we must enrich the word life to mean or include the whole existence, irrespective of our inherited way of thinking. In this way, the new term of the same word, with an enriched meaning, would be rightly established.”

“Even if we profess to be non-judgmental, there's an inherent judgmentality and hierarchy in which the spiritual person, the conscious person, the mindful person, is more developed than the typical truck driver or waitress or heroin addict. This is a red flag, another problem built into the concept of spirituality. The truth is that every person you meet is in some way more developed than you are, and that the multiple modes of development that a human being can pursue require the whole of humanity to pursue. We're in this together. Enlightenment is a collective effort.”

“Even if we restrict ourselves to the comparatively limited conceptual repertoire for talking about such matters that early Wittgenstein makes available, we may already say this: in order to learn a first language, the potential speaker needs not only to learn to see the symbol in the sign, she needs the very idea of language to become actual in her. This formal aspect of what it is to be human—the linguistic capacity as such—is something that dawns with the learning of one’s first language, with one’s becoming the bearer of a linguistic practice. We touched above, in the reply to Sullivan, on how the Tractatus inherits and adapts yet a further feature of the Kantian enterprise of critique: it starts with the assumption not only that we already have the very faculty we seek to elucidate in philosophy, but also that the prosecution of the philosophical inquiry must everywhere involve the exercise of the very capacity it seeks to elucidate. The Tractatus does not seek to confer the power of language on us: we already have this and bring it to our encounter with the book. Hence, it does not seek to explain what language is (as it is sometimes put) from sideways-on—from a position outside language—but rather from the self-conscious perspective of someone who already, in seeking philosophical clarity about what language is, seeks clarity about herself qua linguistic being. Through its exercise, however, the book does seek to confer a heightened mastery of that capacity on us—a reflective self- understanding of its logic and its limits, and of the philosophical confusions that arise from misunderstandings thereof. This heightened mastery (like the general power itself) can be acquired only through forms of further exercise of that same capacity. What I just said about the Tractatus, at this level of methodological abstraction, is no less true of the method of the Philosophical Investigations. The author of the Tractatus, however, unlike later Wittgenstein, never pauses for even a moment to reflect upon what it means to learn to recognize the symbol in the sign through attending to contexts of significant use. Nevertheless, early Witt- genstein would certainly agree with his later self on this point: for the learner of language, light must gradually dawn over the whole—over sign and symbol together.”

“Even if we take into account only atavism, family likenesses, it is inevitable that the uncle who delivers the lecture should have more or less the same faults as the nephew whom he has been deputed to scold. Nor is the uncle in the least hypocritical in so doing, taken in as he is by the faculty that people have of believing, in every fresh experience, that ‘this is quite different,’ a faculty which allows them to adopt artistic, political and other errors without perceiving that they are the same errors which they exposed, ten years ago, in another school of painters, whom they condemned, another political affair which, they considered, merited a loathing that they no longer feel, and espouse those errors without recognising them in a fresh disguise.”

“Even if we try to conform to ideals and strive for perfection, we will always be pulled back to our core identity because it’s the path of least resistance for our souls – an energy force that wants nothing more than for us to honor and accept who we are and discover what we’re meant to do in the world.”