Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All hav… - Stephen Jay Gould

Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.

Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome.

I love these tales because, in more reasonable attributions of motive, they so beautifully embody a fundamental theme of historical explanation - that consequences of substantial import often arise from triggers of entirely different intent. In other words, current utility bears no necessary relationship with historical origin.