It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest cal

Steven Pinker
About This Quote

The quote, “It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest challenges.” by Edward O. Wilson is about how much complacent we are in accepting things as they are, without questioning our assumptions.

Our minds are great at making us assume that because something looks familiar it must have always been that way. Why would anyone assume something so obvious as the sun going around the earth was so obvious? It took an outsider, Copernicus, to come along and push us out of our comfort zone and challenge our assumptions about what was so obvious.

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