Specialization is for Insects

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

 The Emergence of the Week Began the Scientific Mind

The making of our week was another forward step in man's mastery of the world, in his reach toward science. The week was man's own cluster, not dictated by the visible forces of nature, for the planetary influences were invisible. By seeking astral regularities, by imagining that regularly recurring forces at a distance, forces that could be judged only by their effects, might govern the world, mankind was preparing a new arsenal of thought, an escape from the prison of Again-and-Again. The p...

 Skeletal Similarities in Mammals

What a piece of work is the mammalian skeleton. I don't mean it is beautiful in itself, although I think it is. I mean the fact that we can talk about 'the' mammalian skeleton at all: the fact that such a complicatedly interlocking thing is so gloriously different across the mammals, in all its parts, while simultaneously being so obviously the same thing throughout the mammals. Our own skeleton is familiar enough to need no picture, but look at this skeleton of a bat. Isn't it fascinating ho...