Asa Gray Quotes

Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course.

For Dawkins, atheism is a necessary consequence of evolution. He has argued that the religious impulse is simply an evolutionary mistake, a ‘misfiring of something useful’, it is a kind if virus, parasitic on cognitive systems naturally selected because they had enabled a species to survive. Dawkins is an extreme exponent of the scientific naturalism, originally formulated by d’Holbach, that has now become a major worldview among intellectuals. More moderate versions of this “scientism” have been articulated by Carl Sagan, Steven Weinberg, and Daniel Dennett, who have all claimed that one has to choose between science and faith. For Dennett, theology has been rendered superfluous, because biology can provide a better explanation of why people are religious. But for Dawkins, like the other “new atheists” – Sam Harris, the young American philosopher and student of neuroscience, and Christopher Hitchens, critic and journalist – religion is the cause of the problems of our world; it is the source of absolute evil and “poisons everything.” They see themselves in the vanguard of a scientific/rational movement that will eventually expunge the idea of God from human consciousness. But other atheists and scientists are wary of this approach. The American zoologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) followed Monod in his discussion of the implications of evolution. Everything in the natural world could indeed be explained by natural selection, but Gould insisted that science was not competent to decide whether God did or did not exist, because it could only work with natural explanations. Gould had no religious axe to grind; he described himself as an atheistically inclined agnostic, but pointed out that Darwin himself had denied he was an atheist and that other eminent Darwinians - Asa Gray, Charles D. Walcott, G. G. Simpson, and Theodosius Dobzhansky - had been either practicing Christians or agnostics. Atheism did not, therefore, seem to be a necessary consequence of accepting evolutionary theory, and Darwinians who held forth dogmatically on the subject were stepping beyond the limitations that were proper to science.

We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.

This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz. [It had formerly been held that there were no genetic connections among species.]

Perhaps if zoologists would contemplate the wide variations presented by many plants of indubitably one and the same species, and the still wider diversities of long cultivated races from an original stock, they would find more than one instructive parallel to the case of the longest domesticated of all species, man.

Then he began plucking the pins from her hair, carefully, without touching her anywhere else, and Eve began to wonder if 'hair' could possibly be erotic. She found herself holding her breath, listening to his deep, even exhalations as he worked, her hair loosening and beginning to slide. It fell all at once, uncoiling heavily over her shoulders. She turned her head to look at him, suddenly shy. He was staring at her hair. "It's beautiful," he murmured, burying his fingers in the long tresses, gently working apart the strands, lifting and spreading them. "Like liquid gold." He suddenly lifted the mass to his face. "And perfumed. Like flowers." "Lily of the valley." He made her feel exotic, still dressed in her sensible gray frock, only her hair loose about her shoulders. "Lily of the valley," he murmured. "I'll remember that scent forever now, and whenever I smell it again I'll think of you, Eve Dinwoody. You'll be haunting my tomorrows evermore." She gasped and turned, looking up at him. She'd thought that he'd be smiling teasingly at his words, but he looked quite serious and she stared at him in wonder. Had he always carried this part of himself inside? This wild poetic lover? If so, he'd hidden it well underneath the aggressive, foulmouthed theater manager. She had a secret fondness for the crass theater manager, but the poet... She swallowed, suddenly nervous. She might come to love a wild poet.

speed in which he shifts nearly stops my heart. One moment I’m talking to him, the next a gigantic feline prowls over the long dining room table, batting plates aside and growling as he stalks toward me. Scooting my chair back, properly terrified, I quickly say, “Apparently I was wrong.” The lion still appears as if he’s going to attack. “A lion is impressive, yes, but what about an elephant?” I continue. “Can you change into a beast that large? Surely not.” With a loud crack and flying wood, the table collapses as the lion morphs into a creature so gigantic, there is scarcely room for him. Dishes, settings, and candelabras fly this way and that. The elephant holds a huge foot over me. “Are you impressed yet, Carabas?” “Quite,” I squeak and then clear my throat. “But, now that I think of it, it’s only natural that a large creature such as yourself can change into other large creatures. Not that difficult, really.” Slowly, the ogre-elephant lowers his foot, looking as if he’s about to gore me with his tusks. Standing, hoping to put a little distance between me and the beast, I add, “But to change into something tiny, something insignificant—now that would be a feat.” “Like what, Carabas?” the ogre glares at me with foreign eyes. “A rabbit? A grouse?” I shrug. “Certainly, but what about something as tiny as…a mouse? That would be quite impossible, would it not?” And just like that, the elephant is gone, vanished before my very eyes. I frantically look for him in the broken plates, splintered table, and mess of molten wax on the floor. Before I even spot the rodent the ogre shifted into, Puss leaps into the middle of the mess, pouncing with outstretched paws and a greedy look in his bright green eyes. A tiny gray tail disappears into the cat’s mouth, and that is my very last glimpse of the ogre. I stare at Puss with disbelief. The world slows, and the steady thrum of the grandfather clock in the corner is the only thing that tells me that time hasn’t actually stopped. “It

On July 1, 1858, a letter from Lyell was read before the society: “These gentlemen, having, independently and unknown to one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and of specific forms on our planet, may both fairly claim the merit of being original thinkers in this important line of inquiry.” Lyell then shone the spotlight on his friend: an abstract of an essay Darwin had written in 1844 was read first, followed by a summary of a letter Darwin had sent to the American botanist Asa Gray in 1857. Wallace’s paper was read last, almost as an afterthought.

Botany is the name of the science of the vegetable kingdom in general; that is, of plants.

This thing is the love of my life.” A growl entered my voice. “Watch yourself.” I knew I had made a mistake the second the words left my mouth, and Blay began preening. “Rue love Blay more than Asa.” He handed me a section of his hair. “Asa wish Asa was Blay, but Asa not Blay. Sucks to be Asa.

The name of Harvard botanist Asa Gray is another familiar one throughout the area. Gray explored the Roan in 1840 and called it “without doubt, the most beautiful mountain east of the Rockies.