We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language.
Jared DiamondWhat did the last Easter Islander say as he chopped down the last tree? The Easter Islanders didnt have anthropologists.
Jared DiamondWe scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter.
Jared DiamondHistory as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.
Jared DiamondScience is often misrepresented as "the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory." Actually, science is something broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.
Jared Diamond