“We ourselves are part of a guild of species that lie within and without our bodies. Aboriginal peoples and the Ayurvedic practitioners of ancient India have names for such guilds, or beings made up (as we are) of two or more species forming one organism. Most of nature is composed of groups of species working interdependently …”
Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 4.8
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Bill Mollison32
Australian permaculturist 1928–2016Related quotes
Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director
Lo que más interesante es en la naturaleza existen dos especies, unicamente dos especies que son expansionistas: el hombre y los insectos. Las demás especies son territoriales. El insecto es devorador, expansionista, hasta que se siegue expandiendo y no le importa. Y el hombre es así... las dos especies que van a acabar peleándose por el mundo van a ser insectos y hombres. <br class="br">Interview with Guillermo del Toro. http://www.filmoteca.com/sec4/guidtoro.htm
“Do we find ourselves a species naturally free from conflict? We do not.”
Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).
Context: Do we find ourselves a species naturally free from conflict? We do not. There has not, apparently, been in our evolution a kind of rationalization which might seem a possible solution to problems of conflict--namely, a takeover by some major motive, such as the desire for future pleasure, which would automatically rule out all competing desires. Instead, what has developed is our intelligence. And this in some ways makes matters worse, since it shows us many desirable things that we would not otherwise have thought of, as well as the quite sufficient number we knew about for a start. In compensation, however, it does help us to arbitrate. Rules and principles, standards and ideals emerge as part of a priority system by which we guide ourselves through the jungle. They never make the job easy--desires that we put low on our priority system do not merely vanish--but they make it possible. And it is in working out these concepts more fully, in trying to extend their usefulness, that moral philosophy begins. Were there no conflict, it [moral philosophy] could never have arisen.
Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science
Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist
Source: What the Bones Tell Us (1997), Ch. 1
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
54 min 25 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 61
Context: Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea plants, and of fishes. This group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the Silurian System, because largely developed at the surface of a district of western England, formerly occupied by a people whom the Roman historians call Silures.
Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization
Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 39; As cited in as Vivien Martin -(2003) Leading change in health and social care. p. 157: About the organization as organism.
“We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.”
Douglas Adams book Last Chance to See
Source: Last Chance to See