“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?” ThinkingWorldYearsFirstsLooksGovernmentAsksEnergyGrowthNaturalCitiesWonderRecordsCenturyEvidenceResourcesClimatePopulationObviousDecadesPanicFlood21st CenturyThreatenedNatural ResourcesDroughtWorld PopulationConfluence Author:Thomas Friedman
“With so much evidence of depleting natural resources, toxic waste, climate change, irreparable harm to our food chain and rapidly increasing instances of natural disasters, why do we keep perpetuating the problem? Why do we continue marching at the same alarming beat?” ProblemNaturalWasteBeatsEvidenceResourcesClimateClimate ChangeHarmDisasterInstanceChainsToxicNatural ResourcesNatural DisasterFood ChainPerpetuatingIrreparableToxic WasteIrreparable Harm Author:Yehuda Berg
“As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.” WorldWayYearsCountryWould BeEarthChristianBeliefNaturalAtheismTeachingStudentsEvolutionPoliticianEvidenceWesternPositive AtheismOne WayReasonableHospitalsMechanismPropositionsSelectionControversialReconcileNatural SelectionBelief In GodDeductionsDenominationsScandinaviansChristian DenominationsJay Gould Author:Katha Pollitt
“Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!” WayYearsMindHumansMeanChristNaturalAnswersViewsDealsAcceptingWrittenAtheismSubjectsBirthEvidenceSpeciesPositive AtheismArguingExploringExplainingAnalyzingObtainingNatural ScienceMyopicScribes Author:E. O. Wilson
“A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.” WellsSelfCharacterFormWishNaturalEventsActivityShapesEvidenceLettersComplexesAffectionSurfaceDialogueCardsMaskServingFabricTestimonySelf CenteredAssertionSelf ServingOmniscient Book:Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature Source: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
“[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.” NeedsMeanIdeasTogetherFormReligionNaturalModernTheoryCivilizationEvidencePsychologicalLocksNatural SciencePseudoscienceModern CivilizationPsychological Needs Author:E. O. Wilson
“I have hitherto followed the lines marked out by the Theist in his attempt to prove that there exists a mind behind natural phenomena, and that the universe as we have it is, at least generally, an evidence of a plan designed by this mind. I have also pointed out that the only datum for such a conclusion is the universe we know. We must take that as a starting point. We can get neither behind it nor beyond it. We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.” KnowsWorldMindUniverseNaturalLinesBehindsExistencePlansAtheismProveEvidenceStartingPositive AtheismConclusionDataStarting PointTheistNatural Phenomena Author:Chapman Cohen
“The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too.” HumansLooksRealDreamRealityUniverseLanguageNaturalAcceptingEvidenceTeethTendenciesDamnAspireSelectionSpeculationFillingNatural SelectionPavementExchangingAccepting RealityDamn GoodFilling In Author:Dan Harmon
“(Pete) Rose's coming clean is the most soiled conversion of convenience since ... well, Aug. 17, 1998, when DNA evidence caused Bill Clinton to undergo a memory clarification. On the diamond, no one ever wrung more success from less natural talent than Rose did. But his second autobiography - which refutes the first - makes worse the mess he has made.” FirstsWellsMadeNaturalMemoriesTalentEvidenceBillsRoseCleanClintonConversionMessDiamondAutobiographyDnaConvenienceNatural TalentClarificationDna Evidence Author:George Will
“Almost everyone... seems to be quite sure that the differences between the methodologies of history and of the natural sciences are vast. For, we are assured, it is well known that in the natural sciences we start from observation and proceed by induction to theory. And is it not obvious that in history we proceed very differently? Yes, I agree that we proceed very differently. But we do so in the natural sciences as well.” WellsSeemsScienceNaturalDifferencesKnownTheoryEvidenceAgreeObviousObservationWell KnownAssuredMethodologyNatural Science Book:The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality Source: The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality