Human Life Is The Result Of A

I Hardly Recognize What I Do Well. I Just Do It.

I Am Glad That The Life Of Pandas Is So Dull By Human Standards, For Our Efforts At Conservation Have Little Moral Value If We Preserve Creatures Only As Human Ornaments; I Shall Be Impressed When We Show Solicitude For Warty Toads And Slithering Worms.

The Essence Of Darwinism Lies In Its Claim That Natural Selection Creates The Fit. Variation Is Ubiquitous And Random In Direction. It Supplies Raw Material Only. Natural Selection Directs The Course Of Evolutionary Change.

The Human Brain Became Large By Natural Selection (who Knows Why, But Presumably For Good Cause). Yet Surely Most "things" Now Done By Our Brains, And Essential Both To Our Cultures And To Our Very Survival, Are Epiphenomena Of The Computing Power Of This Machine, Not Genetically Grounded Darwinian Entities Created Specifically By Natural Selection For Their Current Function.

I View The Major Features Of My Own Odyssey As A Set Of Mostly Fortunate Contingencies. I Was Not Destined By Inherited Mentality Or Family Tradition To Become A Paleontologist. I Can Locate No Tradition For Scientific Or Intellectual Careers Anywhere On Either Side Of My Eastern European Jewish Background. I View My Serious And Lifelong Commitment To Baseball In Entirely The Same Manner: Purely As A Contingent Circumstance Of Numerous, Albeit Not Entirely Capricious, Accidents.