I Dreamed Of Becoming A Scientist, In

[t]ruly Grand And Powerful Theories [...] Do Not And Cannot Rest Upon Single Observations. Evolution Is An Inference From Thousands Of Independent Sources, The Only Conceptual Structure That Can Make Unified Sense Of All This Disparate Information. The Failure Of A Particular Claim Usually Records A Local Error, Not The Bankruptcy Of A Central Theory. [...] If I Mistakenly Identify Your Father's Brother As Your Own Dad, You Don't Become Genealogically Rootless And Created De Novo. You Still Have A Father; We Just Haven't Located Him Properly.

I Love To Read The Dedications Of Old Books Written In Monarchies For They Invariably Honor Some (usually Insignificant) Knight Or Duke With Fulsome Words Of Sycophantic Insincerity, Praising Him As The Light Of The Universe (in Hopes, No Doubt, For A Few Ducats To Support Future Work); This Old Practice Makes Me Feel Like Such An Honest And Upright Man, By Comparison, When I Put A Positive Spin, Perhaps Ever So Slightly Exaggerated, On A Grant Proposal.

A Lot Of Scientists Hate Writing. Most Scientists Love Being In The Lab And Doing The Work And When The Work Is Done, They Are Finished.

Siphonophores Do Not Convey The Message A Favorite Theme Of Unthinking Romanticism That Nature Is But One Gigantic Whole, All Its Parts Intimately Connected And Interacting In Some Higher, Ineffable Harmony. Nature Revels In Boundaries And Distinctions; We Inhabit A Universe Of Structure. But Since Our Universe Of Structure Has Evolved Historically, It Must Present Us With Fuzzy Boundaries, Where One Kind Of Thing Grades Into Another.

Humans Are Not The End Result Of Predictable Evolutionary Progress, But Rather A Fortuitous Cosmic Afterthought, A Tiny Little Twig On The Enormously Arborescent Bush Of Life, Which If Replanted From Seed, Would Almost Surely Not Grow This Twig Again.