Simon Conway Morris: Quotes about the world

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

“The relative moral merits of any of us are in the final analysis only relevant to exponents of the theistic world picture; to those of scientistic inclination they might be socially useful but in the grand order of things can have no meaning in a soulless world.”

Simon Conway Morris

The Boyle lecture (2005)

World

“… not only that, but it can instruct us as to what may be the limits of desirable knowledge and risks of unbridled curiosity. This world-picture could also show that far from being a series of mindless accidents, history has directions and conceivably end-points.”

Simon Conway Morris

The Boyle lecture (2005)

World , History , Knowledge

“A world-picture that encompasses science but also the deep wisdom of theology may help us to explain how it is we can think, how we discover the extraordinary, but so too it may warn us of present dangers and future catastrophes...”

Simon Conway Morris

The Boyle lecture (2005)

Wisdom , World , Thinking , Science

“Perhaps a suitable analogy to explain the short-falls of Dawkins's account of evolution is to think of an oil painting. In this analogy Dawkins has explained the nature and range of pigments; how the extraordinary azure colour was obtained, what effect cobalt has, and so on. But the description is quite unable to account for the picture itself. This view of evolution is incomplete and therefore fails in its side-stepping of how information (the genetic code) gives rise to phenotype, and by what mechanisms. Organisms are more than the sum of their parts, and we may also note in passing that the world depicted by Dawkins has lost all sense of transcendence.”

Simon Conway Morris

p9.
The Crucible of Creation (1998)

World , Nature , Thinking , Sense

“And the other world-picture?, one based not just on science but wedded to a scientistic programme. Well, you know it as well as I do. Here all is ultimately meaningless.”

Simon Conway Morris

The Boyle lecture (2005)

World , Wedding , Science

“The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 202.

World , Nature

“It seldom seems to strike the ultra-Darwinists that theology might have its own richness and subtleties, and might—strange thought—actually tell us things about the world that are not only to our real advantage, but will never be revealed by science.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: Life's Solution (2003), p. 316.

World , Science

“The underlying ideological agenda of Gould has always been fairly clear. Even where there has been a shift in thinking, it might be argued that in general the discussions were reflecting a particular world-view that at the least was sympathetic to the greatest of twentieth-century pseudo-religions, Marxism.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 11.

World , Religion , Thinking

“Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and we too are one of its products. This does not mean that evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain convinced that this is the case.”

Simon Conway Morris

Source: Life's Solution (2003), p. XV.

World , Way