There is no natural phenomenon that is comparable with the sudden and
apparently accidentally timed development of science, except perhaps the
condensation of a super-saturated gas or the explosion of some unpredictable
explosives. Will the fate of science show some similarity to one of these
phenomena?.
-- Wigner, Eugene P. (1902-1995)
[ in an essay ``The Limits of Science'' intended to estimate them,
originally in Procs. of the _Amer. Philosophical Soc._ v. 94, #5 (1950). ]
The agreement of so many kinds of animals in a certain common structure
which seems to be fundamental not only in their skeletons, but also
in the arrangement of the other parts - so that a wonderfully simple
typical form, by the shortening and lengthening of some parts, and
by the suppression and development of others, might be able to produce
an immense variety of species - allows a ray of hope, however faint,
to enter our minds, that here perhaps some result may be obtained,
by the application of the principle of the mechanism of nature (without
which there can be no natural science in general)....