Chris Aldrich

“One begins to wonder if all the most interesting problems in physics are now in biology.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

“There is more scholarly work on the life-habits of the dung fly than on existential risks [to humanity].”
― Nick Bostrom

“Child, knowledge is a treasury and your heart is its strongbox. As you study all of knowledge, you store up for yourselves good treasures, immortal treasures, incorruptible treasures, which never decay nor lose the beauty of their brightness. In the treasure house of wisdom are various sorts of wealth,and many filing-places in the storehouse of your heart. In one place is put gold, in another silver, in another precious jewels. Their orderly arrangement is clarity of knowledge. Dispose and separate each single thing into its own place, this into its and that into its, so that you may know what has been placed here and what there. Confusion is the mother of ignorance and forgetfulness, but orderly arrangement illuminates the intelligence and secures memory.

(translation by Mary Carruthers)”
― Hugh of Saint-Victor, The Three Best Memory Aids for Learning History

“We should not be too quick to dismiss our own [ocular] arrangement. As so often in biology, the situation is more complex.....we have the advantage that our own light-sensitive cells are embedded directly in their support cells (the retinal pigment epithelium) with an excellent blood supply immediately underneath. Such an arrangement supports the continuous turnover of photosensitive pigments. The human retina consumes even more oxygen than the brain, per gram, making it the most energetic organ in the body.”
― nick lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution