The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.
Martin GardnerRelated topics
absurdity complex dance grotesque gryphon heart idiot illusion last level life mad mathematician metaphor mock moment nonsense quadrille reflecting science tale tell turtle things aliceRelated quotes
In sum, the processes of evolution create initially comparatively simple dynamical systems on particular levels of organisation. The processes then lead to the progressive complexification of the existing systems and, ultimately, to the creation of simpler systems on the next higher organisational level, where complexification begins anew. Thus evolution moves from the simpler to the more complex, and from the lower to the higher level of organisation.
Ervin László
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
Carl Sagan
I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch and all the time knowing that it is empty This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
Karen Blixen
In the penultimate decade of the twentieth century science is sufficiently advanced to resolve the puzzles that stymied scientists in the last century and demonstrate, without metaphysical speculation, the consistency of evolution in all realms of experience. It is now possible to advance a general evolution theory based on unitary and mutually consistent concepts derived from the empirical sciences.
Ervin László
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort to death the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires and expires, too soon, too soon before life itself.
Joseph Conrad
