“Jack Cohen (a science writer and reproductive biologist), defined mankind not so much as Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but as Pan Narrans – the story-telling ape.”
John Thompson and Joe Turlej Other People’s Wars
“[I]t is the mark of an educated man to look for precision to each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics quoted in Walter H. Beale A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric
“There is such a thing [as human nature], and it is not entirely tractable. Its most ominous elements are a deep vein of violence, perhaps attendant on a too-great sense of fright; a weakly developed capacity for material satisfaction, perhaps also partly due to that same sense of fright; a tendency to misjudge the difficulties of life as difficulties arising from a specified cause; and a sort of affectional inertia that puts a drag on generosity outside of a small circle of friends and kin.”
Melvin Konner The Tangled Wing: Biological constraints on the human spirit
In my latest National Post column I deplore Canadian governments’ casual way of denying citizens information even on matters of life and death.
“‘In any look toward 2050, you have the problem of trying to calculate how many babies those who are currently unborn are going to be having. You can’t do that.’”
Nicholas Eberstadt, quoted in “The Population Dud,” The Catholic World Report, May, 2002 according to Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 5 #8 (July/August 2002)
“The measurement of outcomes in higher education is still in the dark ages. There’s still a very strong sense that universities are ultimately measured by the quality of their professoriate and their scholarly output, with relatively less attention paid to the quality of the student experience and the calibre of the learning that goes on. We profile creative and illustrious alumni, and we rub the latest prestigious report or ranking in our hair, but I worry that the actual serious measure of what we’re about is still in its early stages.”
University of Toronto president David Nayor in a Q&A with Kate Fillion in Maclean’s November 13, 2006
“breeding rather than feeding”
John Mercel Robson (my father) summarizing the nature/nurture argument in a letter in 1993