Language is Alive

Language is simply alive, like an organism. We all tell each other this, in fact, when we speak of living languages, and I think we mean something more than an abstract metaphor. We mean alive. Words are the cells of language, moving the great body, on legs. Language grows and evolves, leaving fossils behind. The individual words are like different species of animals. Mutations occur. Words fuse, and then mate. Hybrid words and wild varieties or compound words are the progeny. Some mixed word...

 Survival of the Fittest Refined

The process of natural selection has been summed up in the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. This, however, tells only part of the story. 'Survival of the existing' in many cases covers more of the truth. For in hosts of cases the survival of characters rests not on any special usefulness or fitness, but on the fact that individuals possessing these characters have inhabited or invaded a certain area. The principle of utility explains survivals among competing structures. It rarely accounts f...

 Signs of Global Warming in 1950

...the evidence that the top of the world is growing warmer is to be found on every hand. The recession of the northern glaciers is going on at such a rate that many smaller ones have already disappeared. If the present rate of melting continues others will soon follow them. ...The glaciologist Hans Ahlmann reports that most Norwegian glaciers 'are living only on their own mass without receiving any annual fresh supply of snow'; that in the Alps there has been a general retreat and shrinkage ...