Whatever his inhibitions and tastes, Western man believes in the natural holiness of seminudism and raw vegetable juice, because these have become for him symbols of unadultered nature. Rene Dubos More Quotes by Rene Dubos More Quotes From Rene Dubos Pathological states are the consequence of several determinate factors acting simultaneously...The manifestations of any given agent differ profoundly from one person to another. ...Each noxious agent can express itself by a great variety of different pathological states. ...Different agents can elicit similar reactions. ...The total environment and the (interior medium) constitute a multifactorial system. Rene Dubos acting age dark Eradication of microbial disease is a will-o'-the-wisp; pursuing it leads into a morass of hazy biological concepts and half truths. Rene Dubos wisps disease half There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life. Rene Dubos technology men civilization As far as life is concerned, there is no such thing as "Nature". There are only homes. Home is that environment to which the individual has become adapted; and almost everything is unnatural outside his range of adaptation. Harmonious equilibrium with nature is an abstract concept with a Platonic beauty but lacking the flesh and blood of life. It fails, in particular, to convey the creative emergent quality of human existence. Rene Dubos home life blood You cannot see the Milky Way in New York City any more ... We risk the loss of our sensual perception. And if you lose those, naturally, you try to compensate by other stimulations, by very loud noises, or by bright lights or drugs. Rene Dubos light new-york loss The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind. Rene Dubos remembrance earth mean With reference to life there is not one nature; there are only associations of states and circumstances, varying from place to place and from time to time. Rene Dubos states association life Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. Rene Dubos technology new-york men Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment. Rene Dubos decision tree men Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences. Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior. Rene Dubos destiny self order Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively. Rene Dubos worst-enemy disease men But too often the goal of the planners is a universal gray state of health corresponding to absence of disease rather than to a positive attribute conducive to joyful and creative living. This kind of health will not rule out and may even generate another form of ill, the boredom which is the penalty of a formula of life where nothing is left unforeseen. Rene Dubos boredom creative goal In man, at least, satisfaction is commonly followed by boredom. Rene Dubos boredom satisfaction men The most important pathological effects of pollution are extremely delayed and indirect. Rene Dubos indirect pollution important Life is short, the art is long, the problems pressing. Rene Dubos life long art One may wonder indeed whether the pretense of superior health is not itself rapidly becoming a mental aberration. Rene Dubos aberration health may Think globally, act locally": "Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature. Rene Dubos climate-change salvation thinking Biologically, man is still the great amateur of the animal kingdom; he is unique in his lack of anatomical and physiological specialization. Rene Dubos unique animal men In 1946, Oxford University in England was offered large funds to create a new Institute of Human Nutrition. The University refused the funds on the ground that the knowledge of human nutrition was essentially complete, and that the proposed institution would soon run out of meaningful research projects. Rene Dubos dark running meaningful Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them! Rene Dubos long-ago math worry
