Stephen Baxter: Trending quotes (page 2)

“If, in pursuing this object, we employ our skill in research, not in forming vain conjectures; and if data are to be found, on which Science may form just conclusions, we should not long remain in ignorance with respect to the natural history of this Earth, a subject on which hitherto opinion only, and not evidence, has decided. For in no subject is there naturally less defect of evidence, although philosophers, led by prejudice, or misguided by false theory, have neglected to employ that light by which they should have seen the system of the world.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 14, “We have now got to the end of our reasoning” (p. 130)

World , History , Nature , Light

“The emergent humans were still animals, still bound by natural law. No innovation in the way they lived would have taken root if it had not given them an adaptive advantage in the endless struggle to survive. An ability to believe in things that weren’t true was a powerful tool.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section IV (p. 367)

Law , Way , Nature , Animals

“Francis Bacon, who died in the seventeenth century, argued strongly that philosophy and theology should be kept separate, and that we should concentrate our studies on the local problems and the interconnections between material and efficient causes. Final-cause analysis was just a distraction: ‘Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 5, “The Earth’s blood is the veins of its waters” (p. 43)

God , Problem , Study

“Bex shrugged. “You think anybody’s going to listen to a bunch of scientists? No offense. But nobody has so far.””

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Prologue (p. 6)
Evolution (2002)

Thinking

“If you were part of a group there was always the chance that the predator would take the next guy, not you. It was a cold-blooded lottery that paid off often enough to be worthwhile adapting for.
But there were disadvantages to group living: mainly, if there were large numbers of you, there was increased competition for food. As that competition resolved itself, the inevitable result was social complexity—and the size of the adapids’ brains had increased so that they were capable of handling that complexity. Then, of course, they were forced to become even more efficient at searching for food to fuel those big brains.
It was the way of the future. As primate societies became ever more complex, a kind of cognitive arms race would continue, increasing smartness fueled by increasing social complications.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 5 “The Time of Long Shadows” section I (p. 113)

Food , Way , Guy , Search

“There was no design in this: no sense of improvement, of purpose. All that was happening was that each organism was struggling to preserve itself, its offspring, and its kin. But as the environment slowly changed, so through relentless selection did the species that inhabited it. It was not a process fueled by life, but by death: the elimination of the less well adapted, the endless culling of inappropriate possibilities. But the potential of an unseen future was no consolation to those who lived through the relentless culling.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 5 “The Time of Long Shadows” section II (pp. 120-121)

Life , Death , Sense , Change

““You aren’t doing much for morale, Sidewise.”
Sidewise shot back, “And what about my morale? It does me no damn good to ignore what’s blindingly obvious all around us.””

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 17 “A Long Shadow” section II (p. 539)

“Hutton became very critical of a system where appointments depended not on merit but on the support of those in power. Of one possible opening for Watt he wrote, ‘I think it only needs to have a man properly bestir himself but that is what few political people do unless to serve themselves.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 11, “The power of heat is unlimited” (p. 105)

People , Support , Thinking , Dependency

“Darwin had found a way in which a species could be shaped to fit its environment—not by divine intervention, not by mind, but through the steady, relentless working of natural law. Just like the Huttonian prescription for the Earth, it was a Newtonian scheme for life. For better or worse, Darwin transformed our view of our place in the universe. Humans too are not the outcome of a divine design, but simply products of the relentless workings of natural laws, just like rivers and mountains, beetles and whales.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 20, “It altered the tone of one’s mind” (p. 208)

Life , Law , Way , Mountain

“Humans and their petty doings come and go, but the geology endures.”

Stephen Baxter

Epilogue (p. 223)
Ages in Chaos (2003)

“""… Why Nimrod? Why that name?""
Ramrod straight, he looked down at her. ""I guess you skipped Bible studies at school. Genesis 10, verses 8 to 10: 'And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth… And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and-""
""Babel?""
""It was only generations after the flood of Noah. Chapter 11, verse 4. 'And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.'""
""But God struck them down when they built the tower.""
""Yes. But why? 11, 6. 'Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.' That's what God said about mankind. He feared us, and so He struck us down. We have that verse up on the wall on big banners, to motivate the workforce. 'Nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.'""
""Wow,"" Thandie said. ""You're challenging God?""
""Why the hell not?""”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Flood (2008), Chapter 90

God , Fear , School , Imagination

“In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 15, “The world was tired out with geological theories” (p. 153)

Science

“Relentless Pleistocene selection was shaping everything that would make up humanity. Even love was a by-product of evolution. Love, and the pain of loss.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 10 “The Crowded Land” section II (p. 308)

Love , Pain , Loss

“The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much farther reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to follow.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 15, “The world was tired out with geological theories” (p. 160)

Imagination , Time

“Life had always been chancy. And now life had found ways of surviving the ultimate extinction event. In new oceans and on strange lands, evolution had begun again.
But it had nothing to do with mankind.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 19 “A Far Distant Futurity” section III (p. 636)

Life , Way

“Her story was a creation myth, a legend already more than twenty thousand years old. Such tales—which said that Jahna’s people were the pinnacle of creation, that theirs was the only right way, and that all others were less than human—taught the people to care passionately about themselves, their kin, and a few treasured ideals.
But to the exclusion of all other humans, let alone such non-people as the Old Man’s kind.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 13 “Last Contact” section III (p. 432)

People , Way , Passion

“If you were capable of thinking of an object from more than one point of view, you could imagine it doing all sorts of things. For Mother, consciousness was becoming more than just a tool for lying.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section I (p. 337)

Imagination , Lying , Thinking

“In his reliance on evidence, preferably obtained at first hand, Hutton was showing the way to the geological methods of the future.”

Stephen Baxter

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 8, “A cursed country where one has to shape everything out of a block” (p. 70)

Way , Future

“It’s all a bit anarchic, I suppose, but it’s also highly effective. Flexible, responsive, mobile, heuristic, with intelligence distributed to the lowest level...A bit like an ideal human society, I suppose; free individuals seeking out ways to advance the common good.”

Stephen Baxter book Timelike Infinity

Source: Timelike Infinity (1992), Chapter 12 (p. 266)

Way , Intelligence

“Self-doubt is part of being human...but the main thing is to get on with the business of survival.”

Stephen Baxter book Raft

Source: Raft (1991), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Business , Self-confidence , Parting