Evolution Is A Process Of Constant Branching

I Am Particularly Fond Of [emmanuel Mendes Da Costa's] Natural History Of Fossils Because This Treatise, More Than Any Other Work Written In English, Records A Short Episode Expressing One Of The Grand False Starts In The History Of Natural Science And Nothing Can Be Quite So Informative And Instructive As A Juicy Mistake.

No More Harmful Nonsense Exists Than [the] Common Supposition That Deepest Insight Into Great Questions About The Meaning Of Life Or The Structure Of Reality Emerges Most Readily When A Free, Undisciplined, And Uncluttered (read, Rather, Ignorant And Uneducated) Mind Soars Above Mere Earthly Knowledge And Concern.

Honorable Errors Do Not Count As Failures In Science, But As Seeds For Progress In The Quintessential Activity Of Correction.

I Am Not [...] Asserting That Humans Are Either Genial Or Aggressive By Inborn Biological Necessity. Obviously, Both Kindness And Violence Lie Within The Bounds Of Our Nature Because We Perpetrate Both, In Spades. I Only Advance A Structural Claim That Social Stability Rules Nearly All The Time And Must Be Based On An Overwhelmingly Predominant (but Tragically Ignored) Frequency Of Genial Acts, And That Geniality Is Therefore Our Usual And Preferred Response Nearly All The Time. [...] [t]he Center Of Human Nature Is Rooted In Ten Thousand Ordinary Acts Of Kindness That Define Our Days.

Mass Extinctions May Not Threaten Distant Futures, But They Are Decidedly Unpleasant For Species Caught Up In The Throes Of Their Power.