Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.
What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.
I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.
It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.
I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.
We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.
Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass.
The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.
I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it.
An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.
Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.
We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
