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...Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a…
Take the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), a single species that comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and temperaments. Every single one, purebred or mutt, descends from a single ancestral species—most likely the Eurasian gray wolf—that humans began to select about 10,000 years ago. The American Kennel Club…
The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An…
Psychologists have tested memory performance in people all over the world and found that those who have completed at least a few years of formal education score higher than those from the same culture and economic status who did not attend school; and the more years completed, the better the performance. Where formal…
Touch plays a very special role in the life of young babies. Because it is so well developed at birth, it provides these brand-new arrivals more detailed access to their fascinating new world than any other sense. Touch is obviously essential to babies' sensory-motor development, but it also has a surprisingly potent…
Initially children use just a few names, mostly for familiar things and people. But when they are still just beginning to talk, many babies will suddenly start naming everything and asking for the names of everything they see. In fact, what'sat? is itself often one of the earliest words. An eighteen-monthold baby will…
Once you know about sitters and rovers, you see them everywhere, especially among young children. Drop in on your local Mommy and Me music class: there are the sitters, intently watching the action from their mothers’ laps, while the rovers march around the room banging their drums and shaking their maracas. Relaxed…
In one of his most popular essays, "The Colloid and the Crystal," the nature writer Joseph Wood Krutch wrote about these opposing forces in nature. "Order and obedience are the primary characteristics of that which is not alive," he wrote. "Life is rebellious and anarchical." He was wrong to identify obedience and…
Our response to the natural world is one of reverence and humility in the face of a mystery that transcends empirical knowing-now, certainly, and perhaps forever. "Agnostic" does not do justice to the celebratory aspect of our position. Nor does "pantheist" adequately express our sense of what nature hides…
Pets have all the qualities necessary to be a virus of the mind: - Pets penetrate our minds by attracting our attention. The quality they have that gets them attention is something like "cuteness" or "adorability." - Pets actually program us to take care of them in several ways. The animals themselves take advantage…
Another familiar example is the sculpting of the wolf, Canis lupus, into the two hundred or so breeds of dog, Canis familiaris, that are recognized as separate by the UK Kennel Club, and the larger number of breeds that are genetically isolated from one another by the apartheid-like rules of pedigree breeding…
What is remarkable about the starlings' behaviour is that, despite all appearances, there is no choreographer and, as far as we know, no leader. Each individual bird is just following local rules. The numbers of individual birds in these flocks can run into thousands, yet they almost literally never collide. That is…
1 Humans deliberately choose attractive roses, sunflowers etc. for breeding, thereby preserving the genes that produce the attractive features. This is called artificial selection, it's something humans have known about since long before Darwin, and everybody understands that it is powerful enough to turn wolves into…
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. rhis is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature. The alchemist and the magician in the Middle Ages thought, and the addict of comic strips is still encouraged to think, that nature must be mastered by a…
Senator Fowler nodded. "One other little point, Charlie. Just how often do your reproductive castes breed, anyway?" It was Jock who answered. When Charlie hesitated, David Hardy watched with interest-was there communication by gesture? "When they are allowed to," the alien said smoothly. "Don't yours?" "Eh?" "You…
On this planet, and probably countless more, inanimate atoms became molecules which formed cells and over billions of years those cells evolved into complex organisms which finally became viruses, plants, animals, salamanders, banyan trees and human beings. Without giving it any thought, with no way to think it, the…
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon…
My father dealth a little bit with energy and used the term after I got a little bit of the idea about it. What he would have done I know, because he did in fact essentially the same thing--though not the same example of the toy dog. He would say, "It moves because the sun is shining," if he wanted to give the same…
Perhaps society will become more forgiving of drunken Facebook pictures in the way Gosling says he expects it might. And some may welcome the end of the segmented self, on the grounds that it will discourage bad behavior and hypocrisy: it
So presently to bed and to sleep, but not at once to sleep. At first my brain, like a dog in unfamiliar quarters, must turn itself round for a time or so before it lies down