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
The late twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable growth in scientific interest in the subject of extinction. It is hardly a new subject—Baron Georges Cuvier had first demonstrated that species be...
The kids I see are lazy. Nobody wants to work. I teach physics. It takes years to master. But all the kids want to dress like Charlie Sheen and make a million dollars before they’re twenty-eight. The...
The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.
The internal psychological pressure to make up a story, to explain the ruins before one's eyes, is powerful indeed.
The gene, Dr. Narcejac-Boileau said, is associated with social dominance and strong control over other people. We have isolated it in sports leaders, CEOs, and heads of state. We believe the gene is f...
The fact that the biosphere responds unpredictably to our actions is not an argument for inaction. It is, however, a powerful argument for caution, and for adopting a tentative attitude toward all we...
The exploitations he had found so profitable he now attacked with the money he had made from them. He
The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from...
That’s the greatest single scientific discovery of the twentieth century. You can’t study anything without changing it. Since Galileo, scientists had adopted the view that they were objective observer...
That is a transgenic animal. If he escapes he may transmit his genes to other parrots.
Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience.
Sanders had fought the B-school mentality that she exemplified. After watching these graduates come and go, Sanders had finally concluded that there was a fundamental flaw in their education. They had...
People aren't studying the natural world any more, they're mining it.
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.
My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years in a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn't have cars and airplanes and computers and vacci...
Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish....
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 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...