"All the physical and
chemical
laws that are known to play an important role in the life of organisms are
of this statistical kind; any other kind of lawfulness and orderliness that
one might think of is being perpetually disturbed and made inoperative by
the unceasing heat motion of the atoms."
"There is grandeur in this
view of life... that... from so simple a beginning endless forms most
beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species
"I like to think of the possible shape of the future brooding in mice,
just as it brooded once in a rather ordinary mousy insectivore who
became a man. It leaves a nice fine indeterminate sense of wonder that
even an electronic brain hasn't got, because you know perfectly well
that if an electronic brain changes, it will be bacause of something
man has done to it. A certain scale of time and a ghostly intangible
thing called change are ticking in him. Powers and potentials like the
oak in the seed, or a red and awful ruin. Either way, its impressive;
and the mouse has it too."
Loren Eiseley, "The Bird and the Machine" in The Star Thrower
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