Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the significance of fossils and their role in understanding biodiversity, questioning whether their collection serves a deeper purpose or simply human curiosity.
In this quote, Carl Linnaeus raises a philosophical inquiry about the value of fossil specimens discovered by naturalists. He ponders whether these findings are merely a result of human vanity and curiosity or if they serve a greater purpose in revealing the history of life on Earth. By highlighting the fossilized remains of rare animals and shells, Linnaeus suggests that these stones speak volumes about the past, offering insights into species that once thrived but are now lost to time, thus invoking a sense of wonder and contemplation about nature's history.
In practice
A professor discussing the importance of paleontology in a lecture.
There are as many species as the infinite being created diverse forms in the beginning, which, following the laws of generation, produced many others, but always similar to them: therefore there are as many species as we have different structures before us today.
I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.
Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.
A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discovers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.
Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.
But it will be found... that one universal law prevails in all these phenomena. Where two portions of the same light arrive in the eye by different routes, either exactly or very nearly in the same direction, the appearance or disappearance of various colours is determined by the greater or less difference in the lengths of the paths.
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that.
You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.
String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.
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