"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known."
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Source: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 279, 1989.
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