Saturday, August 04, 2007

Quote of the Week

This week's quote is anti-chicken soup for the soul, a particularly devastating kick-in-the-balls and slap-in-the-face to the modern scientist. Naturally I have to share it:

"What could be cruder than a human being, who is limited to a narrow area of knowledge and practice and has the naivety of a child in most other areas? This is one of the elements that accounts for our clinical state of unconsciousness."

-
John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (1995 Massey Lectures)

Trying to think of a clever analogy to swarm behavior, but my narrow and naive mind fails me...


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

pretty useless post.

Bayman said...

Good to see actual scientists read the bayblab. Actually I should point out that I may have slightly narrowed the focus of Saul's comments - he wasn't criticizing scientist or any profession specifically, but all of Western civilization.