Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?
Interpretation
Human evolution is remarkable, showcasing the extraordinary capabilities of humans compared to other life forms.
In this quote, Steven Pinker highlights the seemingly paradoxical progression of evolution, which has led to the development of diverse life forms, including humans, who have achieved incredible feats such as space travel and technology. He marvels at how the same evolutionary process that created simple organisms is responsible for producing beings capable of profound innovation and exploration.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a presentation about human achievements in science and technology.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.
Nature - how, we don't know - has technology that works in every living cell and that depends on every atom being precisely in the right spot. Enzymes are precise down to the last atom. They're molecules. You put the last atom in, and it's done. Nature does things with molecular perfection.
A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight.
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long.
Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort.
Everything was so new - the whole idea of going into space was new and daring. There were no textbooks, so we had to write them.
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