“How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind, for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.”

—  Peter Medawar

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

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Peter Medawar 40
scientist 1915–1987

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