When one theory is simpler than its competitor, this fact is relevant to saying what the world is like.

The big picture, I think, is that common ancestry is evidentially prior to natural selection in Darwin's theory and in contemporary evolutionary biology as well.

Deism claims that God creates the universe and the laws of nature and then is hands-off, with everything that subsequently happens in nature being due to natural processes.

Earlier attempts to show that simpler theories always have higher prior probabilities have failed, but there is a restricted circumstance in which the claim is right.

I think that the existence of Beethoven is remarkable, but I do not bristle at the suggestion that this event had a low probability given the initial state of the universe.

Biologists now pretty universally regard vitalism as a vestige of a bygone age.

In many contexts, simplicity is not an aesthetic frill.

Scientists often seek predictively accurate models, rather than models that are true.

Our own species evolved under the influence of group selection, as Darwin emphasized when he discussed the evolution of altruism.

"Tiger is a natural kind" and "Tiger is a historical particular" are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

I disagree with the widely held view that it is metaphysical necessity, not nomological, that matters in the mind/body problem.

Change course, but don’t give up.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.

How much had I missed in these months of despair and numbness?

I would love to see writing taught online because at university like Yale, there are not enough teachers who are able to teach writing well, or in some cases, there are none.

He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn't know.

Timmy, he's the beginning of it. He doesn't have to be the end all the time now.

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.

If I'm androgynous, I'd say I lean toward macho-androgynous.

I never did anything I'm really ashamed of.

New things are always ugly.