Human Life Is The Result Of A

Nature Is What She Is - Amoral And Persistent.

Sigmund Freud Often Remarked That Great Revolutions In The History Of Science Have But One Common, And Ironic, Feature: They Knock Human Arrogance Off One Pedestal After Another Of Our Previous Conviction About Our Own Self-importance.

I Am Willing To Believe That My Unobtainable Sixty Seconds Within A Sponge Or A Flatworm Might Not Reveal Any Mental Acuity That I Would Care To Call Consciousness. But I Am Also Confident [...] That Vultures And Sloths, As Close Evolutionary Relatives With The Same Basic Set Of Organs, Lie On Our Side Of Any Meaningful (and Necessarily Fuzzy) Border And That We Are Therefore Not Mistaken When We Look Them In The Eye And See A Glimmer Of Emotional And Conceptual Affinity.

Life Is A Copiously Branching Bush, Continually Pruned By The Grim Reaper Of Extinction, Not A Ladder Of Predictable Progress.

Always Be Suspicious Of Conclusions That Reinforce Uncritical Hope And Follow Comforting Traditions Of Western Thought.