This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It cannot be doubted that in most countries today women, in comparison to men, still remain underprivileged.
Raymond Dart, fully Raymond Arthur Dart
All fossil anthropoids found hitherto have been known only from mandibular or maxillary fragments, so far as crania are concerned, and so the general appearance of the types they represented had been unknown; consequently, a condition of affairs where virtually the whole face and lower jaw, replete with teeth, together with the major portion of the brain pattern, have been preserved, constitutes a specimen of unusual value in fossil anthropoid discovery. Here, as in Homo rhodesiensis, Southern Africa has provided documents of higher primate evolution that are amongst the most complete extant. Apart from this evidential completeness, the specimen is of importance because it exhibits an extinct race of apes intermediate between living anthropoids and man ... Whether our present fossil is to be correlated with the discoveries made in India is not yet apparent; that question can only be solved by a careful comparison of the permanent molar teeth from both localities. It is obvious, meanwhile, that it represents a fossil group distinctly advanced beyond living anthropoids in those two dominantly human characters of facial and dental recession on one hand, and improved quality of the brain on the other. Unlike Pithecanthropus, it does not represent an ape-like man, a caricature of precocious hominid failure, but a creature well advanced beyond modern anthropoids in just those characters, facial and cerebral, which are to be anticipated in an extinct link between man and his simian ancestor. At the same time, it is equally evident that a creature with anthropoid brain capacity and lacking the distinctive, localised temporal expansions which appear to be concomitant with and necessary to articulate man, is no true man. It is therefore logically regarded as a man-like ape. I propose tentatively, then, that a new family of Homo-simidæ be created for the reception of the group of individuals which it represents, and that the first known species of the group be designated Australopithecus africanus, in commemoration, first, of the extreme southern and unexpected horizon of its discovery, and secondly, of the continent in which so many new and important discoveries connected with the early history of man have recently been made, thus vindicating the Darwinian claim that Africa would prove to be the cradle of mankind.
Appearance | Capacity | Evolution | Extreme | Family | History | Important | Man | Present | Question | Race | Value |
Then I had shown, in the same place, what the structure of the nerves and muscles of the human body would have to be in order for the animal spirits in the body to have the power to move its members, as one sees when heads, soon after they have been cut off, still move and bite the ground even though they are no longer alive; what changes must be made in the brain to cause waking, sleep and dreams; how light, sounds, odours, tastes, warmth and all the other qualities of external objects can impress different ideas on it through the senses; how hunger, thirst, and the other internal passions can also send their ideas there; what part of the brain should be taken as 'the common sense', where these ideas are received; what should be taken as the memory, which stores the ideas, and as the imagination, which can vary them in different ways and compose new ones and, by the same means, distribute the animal spirits to the muscles, cause the limbs of the body to move in as many different ways as our own bodies can move without the will directing them, depending on the objects that are present to the senses and the internal passions in the body. This will not seem strange to those who know how many different automata or moving machines can be devised by human ingenuity, by using only very few pieces in comparison with the larger number of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins and all the other parts in the body of every animal. They will think of this body like a machine which, having been made by the hand of God, is incomparably better structured than any machine that could be invented by human beings, and contains many more admirable movements.
Better | Body | Cause | Ideas | Machines | Order | Power | Present | Qualities | Will | Think |
It must not be thought that it is ever possible to reach the interior earth by any perseverance in mining: both because the exterior earth is too thick, in comparison with human strength; and especially because of the intermediate waters, which would gush forth with greater impetus, the deeper the place in which their veins were first opened; and which would drown all miners.
Earth | Perseverance | Thought | Thought |
Darwinism is a remarkably simple theory, childlishly so, in comparison with almost all of physics and mathematics. But we have good reason for believing that this simplicity is deceptive. Simple as the theory may seem, nobody thought of it until Darwin and Wallace in the mid-19th century. How could such a simple idea go so long undiscovered by thinkers of the calibre of Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Hume and Aristotle? What was wrong with philosophers and mathematicians that they overlooked it?
Good | Reason | Simplicity | Thinkers | Thought | Wrong | Thought |
On the Argument from Degree: That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion.
I am sometimes accused of arrogant intolerance in my treatment of creationists. Of course arrogance is an unpleasant characteristic, and I should hate to be thought arrogant in a general way. But there are limits! To get some idea of what it is like being a professional student of evolution, asked to have a serious debate with creationists, the following comparison is a fair one. Imagine yourself a classical scholar who has spent a lifetime studying Roman history in all its rich detail. Now somebody comes along, with a degree in marine engineering or mediaeval musicology, and tries to argue that the Romans never existed. Wouldn't you find it hard to suppress your impatience? And mightn't it look a bit like arrogance?
Arrogance | Hate | History | Intolerance | Scholar | Thought | Following | Thought |
"A little learning is a dangerous thing," and yet it is what all must attain before they can arrive at great learning; it is the utmost acquisition of those who know the most in comparison of what they do not know.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Who shall understand the mysteries of Thy creations? For Thou hast exalted above the ninth sphere the sphere of Intelligence. It is the Temple confronting us, "The tenth that shall be sacred to the Lord," It is the Sphere transcending height, To which conception cannot reach, And there stands the veiled palanquin of Thy glory. From the silver of Truth hast Thou cast it, And of the gold of Reason hast Thou wrought its arms, And on a pillar of Righteousness set its cushions And from Thy power is its existence, And from and toward Thee its yearning, "And unto Thee shall be its desire."
Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny
Internalized experiences of selfhood are linked to autobiographical narratives, which are linked to biographies, legal testimonies, and medical case histories, which are linked to forms of therapy and theories of the subject.
Control | Defects | Humility | Inclination | Judgment | Passion | Reason | Virtue | Virtue |
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
As the physical body does not at once bear the brunt of these irregularities, the first symptoms appear on the functional side, in the etheric body (Archaeus). If we wish to find a current term to designate certain aspects of this irregular function, we must call it Hysteria. We shall use the term Hysteria for the too great autonomy of the processes of Metabolism; and we shall learn later on that the name is not inappropriate. Specific manifestations of hysteria in its narrower sense are nothing but this irregular metabolism raised to its culmination. In essence, the hysterical process, even in its sexual symptoms, consists of metabolic irregularities, which are external processes having no rightful place in the human body. That is, they are processes which the upper sphere has been too weak to master and control.
Important | Individual | Sense | Trifles |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
As a man whose head is under water cannot inhale pure air, so a man whose thoughts are plunged into the cares of this world cannot absorb the sensations of that new world.
Justice |
Our Lord understands our weaknesses; the soul knows by a strong inward surmise whether it truly loves Him.
Evil is the privation of good: hence the order and difference of punishments must be according to the difference and order of good things. The chief good and final end of man is happiness: the higher good for him then is that which comes nearer to this end. Coming nearest to it of all is virtue, and whatever else advances man to good acts leading to happiness: next is a due disposition of reason and of the powers subject to it: after that, soundness of bodily health, which is necessary to unfettered action: lastly, exterior goods, as accessory aids to virtue. The greatest punishment therefore for man will be exclusion from happiness: after that, the privation of virtue, and of any perfection of supernatural (supernaturalium) powers in his soul for doing well: then the disorder of the natural powers of his soul: after that, the harm of his body; and finally the taking away of exterior goods.
Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.