“I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.” IfsHumansLittlesSoulEndsMightCareGrowsResultsConsciousnessProgressRevolutionMessagesRegardPropertyFollowingSeedsTinyStatementsCosmicPredictableKrishnaMantrasPedestalEnd ResultsHaresSmashingTwigsPenetrationAfterthoughtFortuitousHare Krishna Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a principle or progress; it's just a principle of local adaptation. You don't make better creatures in any cosmic sense; you make creatures that are better suited to the changing climates of their local habitats.” ThreeNaturalPrinciplesEnvironmentProgressProduceCreaturesClimateProductionsLocalsFactorsCosmicSelectionAdaptationInheritanceVariationNatural SelectionHabitat Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again.” IfsHumansLittlesEndsGrowsResultsProgressSeedsTinyCosmicPredictableEnd ResultsTwigsPenetrationAfterthoughtFortuitous Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“The new knowledge has not yet settled in culture. It has not yet been integrated in a new cosmic conception.” ScienceCultureProgressConceptionCosmicIntegratedNew Knowledge Author:Johan Huizinga
“Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.” MayMeanEndsWholeHappensSocialProcessStepsProgressConditionsSurvivalEthicalCosmicEvery StepSocial ProgressSubstitution Book:The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley Source: The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley