Simon Conway Morris: Use

Simon Conway Morris is British palaeontologist. Explore interesting quotes on use.
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

“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

“… 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

“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

“Convergence is, in my opinion, not only deeply fascinating but, curiously, it is as often overlooked. More importantly, it hints at the existence of a deeper structure to biology. It helps us to delineate a metaphorical map across which evolution must navigate. In this sense the Darwinian mechanisms and the organic substrate we call life are really a search engine to discover particular solutions, including intelligence and—risky thought—perhaps deeper realities?”

Simon Conway Morris

Astronomy and Geophysics: Vol. 46, No. 4: "Aliens like us?"
Miscellaneous

Life , Search , Intelligence , Reality

“It was G. K. Chesterton who trenchantly reminded us that, if one was going to preach, then it was more sensible to expend one's energies on addressing the converted rather than the unconverted. It was the former, after all, that were—and even more so are—in constant danger of missing the point and sliding away from the Faith into some vague sort of syncretistic, gnostic, gobbledegook. Chesterton, as ever, was right and should you think this is just another of his tiresome paradoxes may I urge you to re-read him: his prescience concerning our present situation and, worse, where we are heading is astounding.”

Simon Conway Morris

The Boyle lecture (2005)

Faith , Thinking , Reading

“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