Western field-work conjures up images of struggle on horseback [:]-toughing it out on one canteen a day as you labor up and down mountains. The value of a site is supposedly correlated with the difficulty of getting there. This, of course, is romantic drivel. Ease of access is no measure of importance. The famous La Brea tar pits are right in downtown Los Angeles. To reach the Clarkia lake beds, you turn off the main road at Buzzard's Roost Trophy Company and drive the remaining fifty yards right up to the site.

Anton Chekhov wrote that 'one must not put a loaded rifle on stage if no one is thinking of firing it.' Good drama requires spare and purposive action, sensibl…

Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly-and many clouds upon our vision are of our own making: social and …

I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a d…

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Nothing is more sacred than the facts.

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.