The Saunterer

Henry David Thoreau on humans’ ghastly side

     We destroy the world, we break a higher law:

    There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man. Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have “seen the elephant”? These are petty and accidental uses; just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones; for everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

    (Quoted from page 124 of The Maine Woods, by Henry D. Thoreau. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884)
    For a brief biography of Henry D. Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry D. Thoreau, click here.

Martin Gardner on our limits to answering life's hard questions

    Our limits are expected, Martin Gardner once told the statistician Persi Diaconis:

    Most anyone would accept as a fact that chimpanzees are incapable of understanding quantum mechanics. I feel the same way about humans understanding the hard questions that stump them; how did the world begin, does God exist, and so on. These questions are so far above our natural human prowess that to fret about them seems as ridiculous as insisting that a dog understand general relativity.

    (Quoted from Persi Diaconis’ foreword to Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner, by Martin Gardner. Princeton University Press, 2013)
    For a brief biography of Martin Gardner, click here. For images of or relating to Martin Gardner, click here.
    For a brief biography of Persi Diaconis, click here. For images of or relating to Persi Diaconis, click here.