As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know anything of the origin of steamships and railways
Interpretation
Our lack of understanding of natural processes does not prevent us from recognizing and utilizing human inventions.
In this quote, Alfred Russel Wallace highlights the idea that just because we may not fully understand the natural laws governing the creation of materials or living things, it does not mean that we cannot appreciate or comprehend the innovations that arise from them, such as steamships and railways. This reflects a broader theme about the relationship between knowledge, ignorance, and the advancement of technology, emphasizing that human ingenuity can thrive even in the absence of complete understanding of nature.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on the history of technology to illustrate how we advance despite gaps in knowledge.
In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as they arise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory; and its principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions of every well established branch of human knowledge.
If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations.
On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism
In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.
There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are sciences and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.
The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form - the one of the particles, the other of the waves - are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases.
Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid down in scriptures, clearly.
Science, as everyone knows, is responsible, moderate, unsentimental, and otherwise good.
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
A sound-bite culture can't discuss science very well. Exactly what we're losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can't be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up.
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