Mantis/evolution

Famous quotes containing the words mantis and/or evolution:

    The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole lurking behind it.
    Chinese proverb.

    By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.
    Owen Barfield (b. 1898)