Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel. - Stephen Jay Gould

We can now determine, easily and relatively cheaply, the detailed chemical architecture of genes; and we can trace the products of these genes (enzymes and proteins) as they influence the course of embryology. In so doing we have made the astounding discovery that all complex animal phyla - arthropods and vertebrates in particular - have retained, despite their half-billion years of evolutionary independence, an extensive set of common genetic blueprints for building bodies.

I am particularly fond of <nowiki>[</nowiki>Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a short episode expressing one of the grand false starts in the history of natural science—and nothing can be quite so informative and instructive as a juicy mistake.

Shall we appreciate any less the beauty of nature because its harmony is unplanned? And shall the potential of mind cease to inspire our awe and fear because several billion neurons reside in our skulls?