Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
Charles DarwinRead
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the process of intellectual growth and the need for new frameworks to accommodate expanding knowledge.
Charles Darwin suggests that as humans acquire knowledge, there comes a point where the existing theoretical frameworks can no longer contain this knowledge, leading to a transformation or evolution in thought. Just as a grub sheds its skin to allow for its growth, the human mind must also shed outdated theories to embrace new ideas and understanding, reflecting the dynamic nature of intellectual development.
In practice
In a lecture on evolution, one could reference this quote to illustrate the importance of adapting ideas.
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science....It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] & holes as sound parts.
We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps
When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, 'Have faith and take your troubles to God.' Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.
I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.
We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness
We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe.
Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
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