Loren Eiseley
Loren Eiseley
Loren Eiseleywas an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was a fellow of multiple professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth3 September 1907
CountryUnited States of America
human-nature
It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes.
taken past origin-of-life
After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.
men together marveling
Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart, never at what the universe has put together, and this is his limitation.
heart men solitude
From the solitude of the wood, (Man) has passed to the more dreadful solitude of the heart.
artist musician poet
The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.
normal
There is nothing very 'normal' about nature.
single-mom men substance
The creature called man has a strange history. He is not of one piece, nor was he born of a single moment in time. His elementary substance is stardust almost as old as the universe.
science religion progress
Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned.
men secret alphabet
Each man deciphers from the ancient alphabets of nature only those secrets that his own deeps possess the power to endow with meaning.
drawing tasks maps
Many of us who walk to and fro upon our usual tasks are prisoners drawing mental maps of escape.
faces core universe
At the core of the universe, the face of God wears a smile
lying night eggs
The secret, if one may paraphrase a savage vocabulary, lies in the egg of night.
blood iron brain
The iron did not remember the blood it had once moved within, the phosphorous had forgot the savage brain.
lonely wine sunset
Nothing grows among its pinnacles; there is no shade except under great toadstools of sandstone whose bases have been eaten to the shape of wine glasses by the wind. Everything is flaking, cracking, disintegrating, wearing away in the long, inperceptible weather of time. The ash of ancient volcanic outbursts still sterilizes its soil, and its colors in that waste are the colors that flame in the lonely sunsets on dead planets.