To romp along the connected rooftops and fire escapes of Chicago's second city of garages was my young life's passion.

Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are 'chosen', the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.

Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable – the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.

What kind of grad student do you take? “I never take a straight A student. A real scientist tends to be critical, and somewhere along the line, they had to rebel against their teachers.

New mutations don’t create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.

For all the accomplishments of molecular biology, we still can’t tell a live cat from a dead cat.

I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change – led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.

Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn’t look anything like a butterfly.

All living beings, not just animals, but plants and microorganisms, perceive. To survive, an organic being must perceive – it must seek, or at least recognize, food and avoid environmental danger.

Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create.