"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness."
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Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. Book by Stephen Jay Gould, Mr. Sophia's Pony, p. 155, 1998.
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