Nature Has Not Fitted Man To Any

Da Vinci Was As Great A Mechanic And Inventor As Were Newton And His Friends. Yet A Glance At His Notebooks Shows Us That What Fascinated Him About Nature Was Its Variety, Its Infinite Adaptability, The Fitness And The Individuality Of All Its Parts. By Contrast What Made Astronomy A Pleasure To Newton Was Its Unity, Its Singleness, Its Model Of A Nature In Which The Diversified Parts Were Mere Disguises For The Same Blank Atoms.

It Is Often Said That The Progression From Simple To Complex Runs Counter To The Normal Statistics Of Chance That Are Formalized In The Second Law Of Thermodynamics. Strictly Speaking, We Could Avoid This Criticism Simply By Insisting That The Second Law Does Not Apply To Living Systems In The Environment In Which We Find Them. For The Second Law Applies Only When There Is No Overall Flow Of Energy Into Or Out Of A System, Whereas All Living Systems Are Sustained By A Net Inflow Of Energy.

But Nature - That Is, Biological Evolution - Has Not Fitted Man To Any Specific Environment. On The Contrary, ... He Has A Rather Crude Survival Kit; And Yet -this Is The Paradox Of The Human Condition - One That Fits Him To All Environments. Among The Multitude Of Animals Which Scamper, Fly, Burrow And Swim Around Us, Man Is The Only One Who Is Not Locked Into His Environment. His Imagination, His Reason, His Emotional Subtlety And Toughness, Make It Possible For Him Not To Accept The Environment But To Change It.

All Science Is The Search For Unity In Hidden Likenesses.

Science Is The Acceptance Of What Works And The Rejection Of What Does Not. That Needs More Courage Than We Might Think.