“We should therefore, with grace and optimism, embrace NOMA's tough-minded demand: Acknowledge the personal character of these human struggles about morals and meanings, and stop looking for definite answers in nature's construction. But many people cannot bear to surrender nature as a “transitional object”—a baby's warm blanket for our adult comfort. But when we do (for we must), nature can finally emerge in her true form: not as a distorted mirror of our needs, but as our most fascinating companion. Only then can we unite the patches built by our separate magisteria into a beautiful and coherent quilt called wisdom.”

—  Stephen Jay Gould , book Rocks of Ages

Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (Ballantine, 1999), p. 178

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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Variant translations:
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