Forelimbs of people, porpoises, bats and horses provide the classic example of homology in most textbooks. They look different, and do different things, but are built of the same bones. No engineer, starting from scratch each time, would have built such disparate structures from the same parts.

Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.

We are storytelling animals, and cannot bear to acknowledge the ordinariness of our daily lives.

Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world

Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

The Darwinian revolution is about essence. The Darwinian revolution is about who we are, it's what we're made of, it's what our life means insofar as science can answer that question.

People may believe correct things for the damndest and weirdest of wrong reasons.