In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
George WaldRead
Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the concept of death as a recent development in the evolutionary process.
George Wald suggests that death is not an inherent part of life but rather a relatively recent aspect of evolution. He implies that for much of the evolutionary history, life may have existed in forms that did not have the same relationship with mortality, prompting reflection on the nature of life and death in the grand scheme of evolution.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the nature of life in a biology class.
In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule; and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel like a big molecule!
Our challenge is to give what account we can of what becomes of life in the solar system, this corner of the universe that is our home; and, most of all, what becomes of men-all men, of all nations, colors, and creeds. This has become one world, a world for all men. It is only such a world that can now offer us life, and the chance to go on.
Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe; a moment that never was before and never will be again.
For the beginning is assuredly the end- since we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities.
You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.
We have had in our nation a well-celebrated Declaration of Independence. But our success as a country will depend upon a new 'Declaration of Inter-dependence.' A belief in how much we need each other, how much we share one common destiny.
If I'm gonna tell a real story, I'm gonna start with my name.
Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the Church.
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