The religious naturalist is provisioned with tales of natural emergence that are, to my mind, far more magical than traditional miracles. Emergence is inherent in everything that is alive, allowing our yearning for supernatural miracles to be subsumed by our… — Ursula Goodenough Copy Share Image
The concept of an independent spiritual realm does not augment, for me, the magic of the mystical dimension, whereas to think of this dimension as emergent from our minds makes it all the more wondrous to be a human. — 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
