Keith Stewart Thomson

Keith Stewart Thomson is president of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. He was born in England and educated at the University of Birmingham and Harvard University. He was professor of biology and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University and director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. More recently, he was adjunct professor of geology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books and articles.

I believe that good science is produced only by broadly literate scientists, otherwise inspiration fails and one is doomed to ape the results of others. The Common but Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays, 1993.

 

Scientists are also passionate, for the creative processes and the results of science are aesthetically rewarding. Ibid.

 

We are all hypocrites about biodiversity. We campaign to save whales, join societies to protect birds and wild plants, and then ruthlessly exterminate cockroaches, black flies, poison ivy, crabgrass, and ragweed, to name just a few. Ibid.

 

Science itself has long since shed its burden of final cause and is functionally neutral to questions of moral, political, and religious conscience. (Scientists are not, but that is a different question, which we expect humanists to help illuminate.)

 

Evolution is simply not random wandering over a four-dimensional landscape. It is quintessentially driven by what exists now and what existed before. Ibid.

 

If our species is like all others, then we are on the Red Queen's treadmill, running as fast as we can to remain in place. This probably applies to our culture as well as biology. Ibid.

 

The death rate for individual humans still remains at exactly 100 percent. Ibid.

 

Change over time is the most solidly based fact of evolution. Ibid.