Mike > Mike's Quotes

“In addition, human beings have, in the most recent few tenths of a percent of our existence, invented not only extra-genetic but also extrasomatic knowledge: information stored outside our bodies, of which writing is the most notable example.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Evolution is adventitious and not foresighted. Only through the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brains and all, here today.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Our probable ancestors, Homo erectus and Homo habilis -now extinct- are classified as of the same genus (Homo) but of different species, although no one (at least lately) has attempted the appropriate experiments to see if crosses of them with us would produce fertile offspring.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been
attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“a typical chromosomal DNA molecule in a human being is composed of about five billion pairs of nucleotides… But since there are four different kinds of nucleotides, the number of bits of information in DNA is four times the number of nucleotide pairs. Thus if a single chromosome has five billion (5 X 10^9) nucleotides, it contains twenty billion (2 X 10^10) bits of information… We also see that if more than some tens of billions (several times 10^10) of bits of information are necessary for human survival, extragenetic systems will have to provide them: the rate of development of genetic systems is so slow that no source of such additional biological information can be sought in the DNA.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“The time scale for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emergence of one advanced species from another is perhaps a hundred thousand years; and very often the difference in behavior between closely related species -say, lions and tigers- do not seem very great... But today we do not have ten million years to wait for the next advance. We live in a time when our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. While the changes are largely of our own making, they cannot be ignored. We must adjust and adapt and control, or we perish.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Somewhere in the steaming jungles of the Carboniferous Period there emerged an organism that for the first time in the history of the world had more information in its brains than in its genes. It was an early reptile which, were we to come upon it in these sophisticated times, we would probably not describe as exceptionally intelligent… Much of the history of life since the Carboniferous Period can be described as the gradual (and certainly incomplete) dominance of brains over genes.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life; any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones…Thus evolution by addition and the functional preservation of the preexisting structure must occur for one of two reasons-either the old function is required as well as the new one, or there is no way of bypassing the old system that is consistent with survival.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“MacLean has shown that the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. Despite occasional welcome exceptions, this seems to me to characterize a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“It is precisely our plasticity, our long childhood, that prevents a slavish adherence to genetically preprogrammed behavior in human beings more than in any other species… Some substantial adjustment of the relative role of each component of the triune brain is well within our powers.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“with rare exceptions (chiefly the social insects), mammals and birds are the only organisms to devote substantial attention to the care of their young; an evolutionary development that, through the long period of plasticity which it permits, takes advantage of the large information-processing capability of the mammalian and primate brains. Love seems to be an invention of the mammals.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Perhaps the locale of the subjunctive mood will
one day be found. Will Latins turn out to be extravagantly endowed and English-speaking peoples significantly short-changed in this minor piece of brain anatomy?”
― Carl Sagan

“Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the
emotional hallmarks of our species”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“For their surface area, insects weigh very little. A beetle, falling from a high altitude, quickly achieves terminal velocity: air resistance prevents it from falling very fast, and, after alighting on the ground, it will walk away, apparently none the worse for the experience… In contrast, human beings are characteristically maimed or killed by any fall of more than a few dozen feet: because of our size, we weigh too much for our surface area.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Those mothers with hereditary large pelvises were able to bear large-brained babies who because of their superior intelligence were able to compete successfully in adulthood with the smaller-brained offspring of mothers with smaller pelvises.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“So far as I know, childbirth is generally painful in only one of the millions of species on Earth: human beings. This must be a consequence of the recent and continuing increase in cranial volume... Childbirth is painful because the evolution of the human skull has been spectacularly fast and recent.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“It is interesting that it is not the getting of any sort of knowledge that God has forbidden, but, specifically, the knowledge of the difference between good and evil-that is, abstract and moral judgments, which, if they reside anywhere, reside in the neocortex.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“If the fact that brutes abstract not be made the distinguishing property of that sort of animal, I fear a great many of those that pass for men must be reckoned into their number.”
― Bishop Berkeley

“Our difficulties in understanding or effectuating
communication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Human spoken language seems to be
adventitious. The exploitation of organ systems with other functions for communication in humans is also indicative of the comparatively recent evolution of our linguistic abilities.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. And it is just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain the ability-lost, according to Josephus, since Eden-to communicate with the animals.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Thus we do not yet have experience with the
adult language abilities of monkeys and apes. One of the most intriguing questions is whether a verbally accomplished chimpanzee mother will be able to communicate language to her offspring. It seems very likely that this should be possible and that a community of chimps initially competent in gestural
language could pass down the language to subsequent generations.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as "human rights"? How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder? What further properties must he show before religious missionaries must
consider him worthy of attempts at conversion?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Like other mammals, they are capable of strong emotions. They have certainly committed no crimes. I do not claim to have the answer, but I think it is
certainly worthwhile to raise the question: Why, exactly, all over the civilized world, in virtually every major city, are apes in prison?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Until fairly recently it was thought that humans had
fortv-eight chromosomes in an ordinary somatic cell. We now know that the correct number is forty-six. Chimps apparently really do have forty-eight chromosomes, and in this case a viable cross of a chimpanzee and a human would in any event be rare.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence