Related:

• The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.
  -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Mismeasure of Ma...
• The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without. -- S.J. Gould
• VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrance
  others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space....
• Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock.
  Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history....
• life n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner ("Scientific American", October 1970)
  he game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the cells by hand....
• If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence
  hen we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy-- *sic transit gloria mundi*....
• The enemy of science is irrationalism, not religion. -- Stephen Jay Gould
• There were few things more useless than a unloaded pistol -- 'Without Remorse' by Tom Clancy
• life: n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner ("Scientific American", October 1970)
  he game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the cells by hand....