I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing untapped potential and talents in ordinary people beyond famous individuals.
Stephen Jay Gould highlights a profound observation regarding the unnoticed brilliance that exists among the many individuals who have lived ordinary lives, particularly those in labor-intensive jobs. He suggests that while we celebrate the intellect of renowned figures like Einstein, we must also acknowledge the talented individuals whose abilities were never realized due to their circumstances, emphasizing a broader understanding of potential and human worth.
In practice
This quote could be used to inspire students who may feel overlooked in their abilities.
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.
Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.
For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time.
Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.
But manly set the world on sixe and sevene; And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.
Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times.
Be silent. That heart speaks without tongue or lips.
And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion.
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.
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