If I put myself on the side of those who see the world as warming up in a … - Richard Lewontin

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Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

Richard Lewontin

If I put myself on the side of those who see the world as warming up in a bad way, who see the general march of industrial culture as something undesirable, the one thing I must be beware of doing and which my colleagues on that side don't beware of doing, we must beware of saying we've got to stop changing the environment. There is no 'the' environment which we can change, the world is changing all the time.

Culture, Saying, See, Way, World

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The general public doesn't know and probably doesn't care about punctuated equilibria nor indeed should they, or the greenhouse effect on some other planet - they barely have the ability to cope with the greenhouse effect on their own planet. So I think you have to distinguish between the broad visibility of a scientist when he or she is speaking to a general public and trying to address general issues and the continued position that a scientist may have into the history of a particular subject.

Thinking, Issues, Trying, General, Particular, Cope

As an American I must say I haven't been very encouraged by the way in which the people who run the government in the United States have been listening to those contrary voices. And so long as the power to run the world lies in the hands of people who are quite happy to see it get warmer, or fuel be used more, then would those people who oppose it are crying in the wilderness - that's the real problem.

Happy, Long, Lying, Real, Run, Running

In fact perhaps the only law in biology is that all flesh is mortal and all species become extinct eventually.

Become, Eventually, Facts, Flesh, Law, Mortal

With respect to phenomena like mass extinction, somebody might say why worry about it because in a geological perspective mass extinctions aren't so bad, they wipe out some things and then 10 million years down the road we get new and interesting objects. But I tell you mass extinctions are really awful for folks caught in the midst of them.

Mass Extinction, Years, Interesting, Things, Bad, Midst

Evolutionists. . . have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Commitment, Science, Acceptance, Methods, Mystifying, Causes