Life from nonlife, like wine from water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen to be the near-inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances. — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
Early humans, bursting with questions about Nature but with limited understanding of its dynamics, explained things in terms of supernatural persons and person-animals who… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
The most reliable joy is to be out of doors, to be a creature among other creatures. I find it very restful. — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
Human consensus does not generate reality. Were it able to do so, the Sun would have taken to orbiting the Earth some time ago. — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
Reverence is the sense that there is something larger than the self, larger even than the human, to which one accords respect and awe… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
Perhaps we should all settle down and think about what's good in the world and what we want to do here. If we find… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
The evolution of the cosmos invokes in me a sense of mystery; the increase in biodiversity invokes the response of humility; and an understanding… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
The biochemistry and biophysics are the notes required for life; they conspire, collectively, to generate the real unit of life, the organism. The intermediate… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
Human memory, they say, is like a coat closet: The most enduring outcome of a formal education is that it creates rows of coat… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
“Life, we can now say, is getting something to happen against the odds, and remembering how to do it.” — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
It is as we respond to the understandings and feelings inherent in . . . art that we acquire much of our truth, much… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
The religious naturalist is provisioned with tales of natural emergence that are, to my mind, far more magical than traditional miracles. Emergence is inherent… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
