"Studying the universe engages us in something bigger than ourselves. Science tries to describe, in terms we can only grasp intuitively, things that are beyond our intuition. . . . all we can hope for is that our physical descriptions, like a song or a good painting, are a faithful evocation of some ineffable truth."  --Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J. The Way to the Dwelling of Light, 1998, p. 3.  "Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember." --Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1817, cited in Scott Gilbert, Developmental Biology, 1988, p. 363, (note: college textbook). "For the real amazement, if you wish to be amazed, is this process. You start out as a single cell derived from the coupling of a sperm and an egg; this divides into two, then four, then eight, and so on, and at a certain stage there emerges a single cell which has as all its progeny the human brain. The mere existence of such a cell should be one of the great astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell."  --Lewis Thomas, 1979, cited in Scott Gilbert, Developmental Biology, 1988, p. 152, (note: college textbook)      Return to the Intellectual Ways of Knowing page.