William Patten (zoologist) Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

To make way for terrestrial life, nature labored on a universal scale. Matter was the warp and energy the woof of her growing fabrics; constellations were the patterns.

William Patten
Much of our biological teaching is like a shop window display of nature's competitive goods, with a varied assortment of human notions thrown in, but with no guarantee as to their significance, or quality, or usefulness.

William Patten
Life is not an act apart, nor is it the product of any specific time, or place, or material. It is the offspring of the physical world; a transient phase of creative power in the universal whole.

William Patten
A solar system... has attributes and powers that cannot be defined or measured in terms of its members, or of its ultimate chemical elements, for a solar system is not merely an aggregate, or the algebraic sum of its various elements and qualities... It is a system, a new type of individuality, with special creative powers of its own.

William Patten
Out of the nebular pull and thrust, and meteoric collision came the germs of celestial spheres and a measure of celestial order. In the wide womb of the cosmic night commingling, nebular gamites the germ plasma of the sun and her family of planets engendered.

William Patten
The barriers within which life resides are not impregnable. In its traffic with nature, life is free to look beyond its tenement walls; free to receive directive agencies from afar, and thereby free to enlarge its heritage. By this universal attribute of profitable exchange, life grows in volume and complexity.

William Patten
To the amoeba, the jelly-fish, or the worm, the "world" is the franchise of an hour in a drop of water; a niche in the rocks for a season; or a home in the sea for a decade. To man, the "world" is the universal whole of time and space, for their content are his to explore and to utilize. And therein lies our measure of freedom and attainment.

William Patten