“Darwin's] triumph has won for us a common height from which we see the whole world of living beings as well as all inorganic nature; phenomena of every order we now regard as expressions of natural causes. The supernatural has no longer a standing is science; it has vanished like a dream, and the halls consecrated to its thraldom of the intellect are becoming radiant with a more cheerful faith.”

lecture at Clark University, " A study in evolution, based on color-characters in pigeons, and bearing on moot questions http://books.google.com/books?id=TdcwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA3" (1909), quoted in Eight Little Piggies (W.W. Norton, 1993) by Stephen Jay Gould, page 366

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Darwin's] triumph has won for us a common height from which we see the whole world of living beings as well as all inor…" by Charles Otis Whitman?
Charles Otis Whitman photo
Charles Otis Whitman 1
American zoologist 1842–1910

Related quotes

Ray Comfort photo

“We don't need faith to believe in God because the whole of Creation, the whole of nature, is ordered. It isn't a semblance of order, it has order, from the atom through to the universe, we see the genius of God's creative hand.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“But it can all be summed up in this: The average man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and can not exist.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: It is probably safe to say that at one time, or during one phase of the development of man, everything was miraculous. After a time, the mind slowly developing, certain phenomena, always happening under like conditions, were called “natural,” and none suspected any special interference. The domain of the miraculous grew less and less—the domain of the natural larger; that is to say, the common became the natural, but the uncommon was still regarded as the miraculous. The rising and setting of the sun ceased to excite the wonder of mankind—there was no miracle about that; but an eclipse of the sun was miraculous. Men did not then know that eclipses are periodical, that they happen with the same certainty that the sun rises. It took many observations through many generations to arrive at this conclusion. Ordinary rains became “natural,” floods remained “miraculous.” But it can all be summed up in this: The average man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and can not exist.

Victor Hugo photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
Gerald Durrell photo

“We now stand so aloof from nature that we think we are God. This has always been a dangerous supposition.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Two in the Bush (1966)
Context: We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors. We go on, year after year, all over the world, creating dust bowls and erosion, cutting down forests and overgrazing our grasslands, polluting one of our most vital commodities — water — with industrial filth and all the time we are breeding with the ferocity of the Brown Rat, and wondering why there is not enough food to go round. We now stand so aloof from nature that we think we are God. This has always been a dangerous supposition.

Leon R. Kass photo

Related topics