In The Long Run I Certainly Hope

To Put It Bluntly But Fairly, Anyone Today Who Doubts That The Variety Of Life On This Planet Was Produced By A Process Of Evolution Is Simply Ignorant — Inexcusably Ignorant, In A World Where Three Out Of Four People Have Learned To Read And Write.

If The History Of Resistance To Darwinian Thinking Is A Good Measure, We Can Expect That Long Into The Future, Long After Every Triumph Of Human Thought Has Been Matched Or Surpassed By 'mere Machines,' There Will Still Be Thinkers Who Insist That The Human Mind Works In Mysterious Ways That No Science Can Comprehend.

If You Can Approach The World's Complexities, Both Its Glories And Its Horrors, With An Attitude Of Humble Curiosity, Acknowledging That However Deeply You Have Seen, You Have Only Scratched The Surface, You Will Find Worlds Within Worlds, Beauties You Could Not Heretofore Imagine, And Your Own Mundane Preoccupations Will Shrink To Proper Size, Not All That Important In The Greater Scheme Of Things.

Is He A Dread Genetic Determinist, Or A Dread Environmental Determinist? He Is Neither, Of Course, For Both These Species Of Bogeyman Are As Mythical As Werewolves. By Increasing The Information We Have About The Various Causes Of The Constraints That Limit Our Current Opportunities, He Has Increased Our Powers To Avoid What We Want To Avoid, Prevent What We Want To Prevent. Knowledge Of The Roles Of Our Genes, And The Genes Of The Other Species Around Us, Is Not The Enemy Of Human Freedom, But One Of Its Best Friends.

When People Ask Me What Philosophy Is, I Say Philosophy Is What You Do When You Don't Know What The Right Questions Are Yet. Once You Get The Questions Right, Then You Go Answer Them, And That's Typically Not Philosophy, That's One Science Or Another. Anywhere In Life Where You Find That People Aren't Quite Sure What The Right Questions To Ask Are, What They're Doing, Then, Is Philosophy.