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Natural Quotes

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Natural Quotes

“The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation of it.”

Natural Logic Mathematics Enormous Rational Mysterious Certainty Uncertainty Explanation Reasoning Usefulness Ontology Natural Science

Book:Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses

Source: Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses

“As children we all possess a natural uninhabited curiosity, a hunger for explanations, which seems to die slowly as we age--suppressed, I suppose by the need not to appear ignorant.”

Needs Children Seems Age Dies Natural Curiosity Hunger Ignorant Explanation

Author:Mahlon Hoagland

“Today we know not only that there is a terrible amount of disorder in the heavens - great catastrophes or conflagrations occur frequently - but evolution gives us a perfectly natural explanation of such order as there is. No distinguished astronomer now traces "the finger of God" in the heavens; and astronomers ought to know best.”

Knows Giving Today Order Heaven Natural Atheism Ought Evolution Amount Terrible Fingers Explanation Disorder Catastrophe Distinguished Astronomers Perfectly Natural

Book:The Story of Religious Controversy

Source: The Story of Religious Controversy

“Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.”

May Facts Turns Universe Natural Existence Theory Evolution Explanation Remarkable Selection Natural Selection Theory Of Evolution

Book:The Theory of Evolution

Source: The Theory of Evolution

“Death is not regarded as a natural affair by primitive man. Death is believed to be due to the intervention of some malevolent or at least not well disposed power. Normally it should not take place. So we have all through history crude explanations of death, as e.g., the influence of the serpent, the devil, sin.”

Men Should Wells Natural Sin Influence Devil Affair Dues Explanation Primitive Intervention Crude Serpent Primitive Man

Book:The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy

Source: The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy

“I was lucky to wander into evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting and important of all scientific fields. I had never heard of it when I started at a rather tender age; I was simply awed by dinosaurs. I thought paleontologists spent their lives digging up bones and putting them together, never venturing beyond the momentous issue of what connects to what. Then I discovered evolutionary theory. Ever since then, the duality of natural history-richness in particularities and potential union in underlying explanation-has propelled me.”

Important Age Together Natural Issues Heard Atheism Fields Theory Lucky Exciting Unions Bones Wander Explanation Richness Duality Digging Dinosaurs Natural History

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“The argument from design is ultimately an appeal to miraculous causes, i.e., causes that do not, and cannot, occur in the natural course of events. This is why an explanation via design is not a legitimate alternative to scientific and other naturalistic modes of explanation. To refer to a miraculous cause is to refer to something that is inherently unknowable, and this sanctuary of ignorance explains nothing at all. However much it may soothe the imagination of the ignorant, it does nothing to satisfy the understanding of a rational person.”

Source: Why Atheism?

“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”

“One should not wrongly reify 'cause' and 'effect,' as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now 'naturalizes' in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it 'effects' its end; one should use 'cause' and 'effect' only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication-not for explanation.”

Thinking Should Ends Use Purpose Causes Natural Fiction Effects Communication Pure Concepts Scientist Presses Explanation Conventional Cause And Effect Prevailing Designation

Book:Basic Writings of Nietzsche

Source: Basic Writings of Nietzsche

“Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible though very unlikely that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism.”

World Reason Whole Natural Possibility Fine Needed Whole World Manage Explanation Materialism Controlled Unlikely Natural World

Book:Why Evolution Is True

Source: Why Evolution Is True