“The wonders of nature, she learned, from wing of bee to sonar of bat to eyeball of baby, were not so much perfect machines as adequate contraptions. If nature bespoke a mind, it was a confused and inchoate one, a mind incapable of locating the optic nerve on the correct side of the retina, a mind unable to accomplish much of anything without resort to jerry-building and extinction.”

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 15 (p. 254)

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James K. Morrow 166
(1947-) science fiction author 1947

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