Simon Conway Morris: Humanity

Simon Conway Morris is British palaeontologist. Explore interesting quotes on humanity.
Simon Conway Morris: 56   quotes 0   likes

“It is my opinion that human history can make no sense unless evil doings are recognized for what they are, and that they are bearable only if somehow they may be redeemed.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 205.

History , Sense , Evil

“The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 205.

History , Failure , Appearance , Time

“If one compares the sequence of amino acids that go to form the protein haemoglobin, it becomes apparent that humans and chimps are identical and do not differ in a single site …”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 151.

“Gould's arguments on the quirkiness of human intelligence are not only presented as part of an evolutionary argument, but also I believe to buttress an ideological viewpoint. In brief, his assessment of Man as an evolutionary accident is to lead us into a libertarian attitude whereby, by virtue of a cosmic accident, we, and we alone, have no choice but to take responsibility for our own destiny and mould it to our desire.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 14.

Intelligence , Parting

“If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 205.

Evil , Past , Parting

“In a stroke of imaginative genius our understanding of consciousness was radically transformed, but in an entirely unexpected way. Critical clues came from diffuse nerve nets and, even more extraordinarily, plant neurobiology. Banished forever was the idea that the brain alone was the seat of consciousness. Rather, it is an 'antenna' embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix. The depths of reality are only now being uncovered, but now the springs of imagination, intuition, abstraction and even pre-cognition are revealed. What was once called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics was simply a clue to a superbly structured universe where mind is an integral component, instantiated at the big bang or maybe even before? Future exploration offers dizzying prospects, but we are not the first to venture forth. Far in advance of the emergence of human consciousness, innumerable galactic civilisations had slipped into what we now call the Mortimer Manifold.”

Simon Conway Morris

"King of Sweden" presenting "Professor Mortimer" with the 2056 Nobel prize, in "Simon Conway Morris forecasts the future" at NewScientist.com (15 November 2006) http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts/dn10477-simon-conway-morris-forecasts-the-future.html.

Way , Imagination , Spring , Mathematics