The meaning of these discoveries has not yet been sorted out, but it is certainly now impossible to regard the prehistoric Europeans as savages idly awaiting the blessings of Eastern civilization.
That is a transgenic animal. If he escapes he may transmit his genes to other parrots.
Straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn't a series o...
Plants evolve like every other form of life, and they’ve come up with their own forms of aggression, defense, and so on. In the nineteenth century, most theories concerned animals—nature red in tooth...
Photographs provided a tangible reality to men who were far from home, fearful and tired; they were posed proofs of success, souvenirs to send to sweethearts and loved ones, or simply ways of remember...
Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any hum...
On the video monitor, they saw Ted Fielding slap the polished sphere and shout, Open! Open Sesame! Open up, you son of a bitch!The sphere did not respond.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your dai...
Nature was not gentle or nice. There was no such thing as mercy in the natural world. You don’t get any points for trying. You either survive or you don’t.
Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company....
Morality must keep up with technology because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they'll choose life everytime.
Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the po...
I’m talking about all the order in the natural world, Malcolm said. And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can...
It’s just theories. Human beings can’t help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogist...
It was interesting that the compys only ate fresh dung,
It isn’t a matter of wanting it or not, Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. It’s a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest t...
It isn't a matter of wanting it or not. It's a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect co control nature? N...
It is difficult, after the passage of more than a century, to understand the extent to which the train robbery of 1855 shocked the sensibilities of Victorian England. At first glance, the crime hardly...
Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.
In his blackest hours, Stone doubted the utility of all thought, and all intelligence. There were times he envied the laboratory rats he worked with; their brains were so simple. Certainly, they did n...