“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees. If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the earth’s CO₂ blanket, the earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation, this is high school science.”

Paul Gilding

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“Claire knows our household spiders freakishly well. She names them all: currently we have Abigail behind the front door, Puddles in the bathroom, and a wandering Fiona. Claire monitors their webs, diagrams their whereabouts, and worries over their diets. She wonders whether it is ethical to toss an insect Abigail’s way if it seems none are finding their way to her web themselves. She puts up notes to reroute guests if their ramblings might disturb one of our arachnid roommates. She knows our household spiders every bit as well as I know the neighborhood crows, and I’m impressed with her studies.”

Lyanda Lynn Haupt

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“When our leaders take these anti-science positions, or when they happily plead ignorance about some of the most important issues of our time—our energy use, global warming, genomics, all the revolutions unleashed by computer science—they’re not just being anti-intellectual. They’re also being un-American. The people who founded this country were serious science geeks. We should be celebrating this fact, not running away from it.”

Steven Johnson

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“These cells and molecules, awash in various neurochemical cocktails in my basal ganglia, are presumably the basis for my love and attachment to my husband.”

Joy Hirsch

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“Healing is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.”

W. H. Auden

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