An Inert Historical Fact Is Any Fact

If I Were To Give A Prize For The Single Best Idea Anybody Ever Had, I'd Give It To Darwin For The Idea Of Natural Selection - Ahead Of Newton, Ahead Of Einstein - Because His Idea Unites The Two Most Disparate Features Of Our Universe: The World Of Purposeless, Meaningless Matter And Motion, Particles Jostling On The One Side, And The World Of Meaning And Purpose, Design On The Other.

Keep Darwinian Thinking Out Of Cosmology, Out Of Psychology, Out Of Human Culture, Out Of Ethics, Politics, And Religion!

I Am Confident That Those Who Believe In Belief Are Wrong. That Is, We No More Need To Preserve The Myth Of God In Order To Preserve A Just And Stable Society Than We Needed To Cling To The Gold Standard To Keep Our Currency Sound. It Was A Useful Crutch, But We've Outgrown It. Denmark, According To A Recent Study, Is The Sanest, Healthiest, Happiest, Most Crime-free Nation In The World, And By And Large The Danes Simply Ignore The God Issue. We Should Certainly Hope That Those Who Believe In Belief Are Wrong, Because Belief Is Waning Fast, And The Props Are Beginning To Buckle.

There Is No Such Thing As Philosophy-free Science, Just Science That Has Been Conducted Without Any Consideration Of Its Underlying Philosophical Assumptions.

In 50 Years - Or 20 Years, Or 200 Years - Our Current Epistemic Horizon (the Big Bang, Roughly) May Look As Parochial As The Horizon Newton Had To Settle For In His Day, But No Doubt There Will Still Be Good Questions Whose Answers Elude Us.