"Boyle was among the first who recognized that the withdrawal of sympathy licenses conduct that would not be permissible within an animistic vision of nature. ...The vision that he and his scientific colleagues were creating was fast becoming a mathematical abstraction lacking color, odor, texture, and personality. ...The task of the natural philosopher, we are told, is to "probe," "penetrate," and "pierce" nature in all her "mysterious," secret," and "intimate recesses."

“Some Calvinist divines identified an "idol" as anything "feigned in the mind by imagination." There is a haunting similarity between such teachings and Galileo's bold attack upon what he called "secondary qualities" in nature.”

“Because girls are raised to specialize in a certain set of human characteristics, would they not, then, bring to science a different sensibility? Does that sensibility have the right to be represented in science—or, for that matter, in business, politics, law, or medicine?”

“The truth of the matter is no society, not even our severely secularized technocracy, can ever dispense with mystery and magical ritual.”

“All the while, steadily and without fanfare and as invincibly as all things blossom, ripen, and mature, more people were living longer. And as they did so, they were creating a possibility not even the most far-sighted futurist had anticipated.”

“In a time when so many artists have learned to confabulate with extremes of horror and alienation, the most daring thing an artist can do is to fill a book, a gallery, or a theater with joy, hope, and beauty.”

“Science, in broad outline, can be divided into three parts: the study of the vast, the study of the tiny, and the study of life which... acts as audience to both the vast and the tiny.”