Infinitum

The Kraken

Below the giant thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the lumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Alfred Tennyson, 1830

Tags: Atlantis, Cthulhu, poetry, tennyson

Quotes of Charles Darwin

 

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”

“Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

“Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.”

“But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand – If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt”

“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection”

“I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley”

“We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.”

“The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient”

“Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.”

“I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.”

” As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.”

” Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress”

“doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue”

“On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim ‘Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work’”"

“we can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe[s,] to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act”

“a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, — a mere heart of stone”

“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars”

“I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts & grinding out conclusions”

“I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion”

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science”

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real”

“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?”

Tags: Darwin, quotes

Royal Society

The Royal Society’s motto ‘Nullius in verba’, roughly translated as
‘Take nobody’s word for it’, dates back to 1663, and is an expression
of the determination of the Fellows to withstand the domination of
authority (such as in Scholasticism) and to verify all statements by an
appeal to facts determined by experiment. The Latin words (see below)
are taken from a passage of Horace in which the poet compares himself
to a gladiator, who, having earned peace and retirement, is free from
control.

‘Nullius in verba’ was chosen to accompany the arms given to the Society by Charles II in the second charter
of 1663. John Evelyn had sketched a variety of possible ‘Armes and
mottoes proposed for ye Royal Society, 1660′, which included the motto
eventually chosen and still used today. Designs which failed to make
the final cut included a vessel under sail with the motto ‘Et augebitur
scientia’, a hand issuing from clouds holding a plumb-line with the
motto ‘Omnia probate’ (1 Thess. 5.21), two telescopes extended in
saltire with earth and planets, motto ‘Quantum nescimus!’, and a shield
bearing the sun in its splendour inscribed ‘Ad majorem lumen’, plus on
one side of the shield ‘Quis dicere falsum audeat?’. A final design, a
shield charged with terrestrial globe and human eye, is headed ‘Rerum
cognoscere causas’ from Virgil’s Georgics, alongside which is the word
‘Experiendo’ and a repetition of ‘Nullius in verba’. All were rejected,
with the exception of the latter, and the arms were entered into the
official volume, ‘Royal Concessions in the College of Arms’, approved
by the King on 22 April 1663 and entered into the record by Elias
Ashmole on 30 June 1663.

Ac ne forte roges, quo me duce, quo lare tuter,
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri.
(Horace, Epistles I.i, 1.13-14)

You shall not ask for whom I fight
Nor in what school my peace I find;
I say no master has the right
To swear me to obedience blind.
(trans. C.T. Carr)

Tags: Secret Societies