(46) Scientists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them.

(47) but we have at least drawn nearer the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of intrinsic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic advantage to us.

(48) Time was when biologists somewhat overworked the evidence that these creatures preserve the health of game by killing the physically weak, or that they prey only on “worthless” species.

(49) In Europe, where forestry is ecologically more advanced, the noncommercial tree species are recognized as members of the native forest community, to be preserved as such, within reason.

(50) It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are essential to its healthy functioning.

(46) Allen’s contribution was to take an assumption we all share—that because we are not robots we therefore control our thoughts—and reveal its erroneous nature.

(47) while we may be able to sustain the illusion of control through the conscious mind alone, in reality we are continually faced with a question: “Why cannot I make myself do this or achieve that?”

(48) This seems a justification for neglect of those in need, and a rationalization of exploitation, of the superiority of those at the top and the inferiority of those at the bottom.

(49) circumstances seem to be designed to bring out the best in us and if we feel that we have been “wronged” then we are unlikely to begin a conscious effort to escape from our situation.

(50) The upside is the possibilities contained in knowing that everything is up to us; where before we were experts in the array of limitations, now we become authorities of what is possible.

(46) In physics, one approach takes this impulse for unification to its extreme, and seeks a theory of everything—a single generative equation for all we see.

(47) Here, Darwinism seems to offer justification, for if all humans share common origins, it seems reasonable to suppose that cultural diversity could also be traced to more constrained beginnings.

(48) To filter out what is unique from what is shared might enable us to understand how complex cultural behavior arose and what guides it in evolutionary or cognitive terms.

(49) The second, by Joshua Greenberg, takes a more empirical approach to universality, identifying traits (particularly in word order) shared by many languages, which are considered to represent biases that result from cognitive constraints.

(50) Chomsky’s grammar should show patterns of language change that are independent of the family tree or the pathway tracked through it, whereas Greenbergian universality predicts strong co-dependencies between particular types of word-order relations.

(46) yet when one looks at the photographs of the gardens created by the homeless, it strikes one that, for all their diversity of styles, these gardens speak of various other fundamental urges, beyond that of decoration and creative expression.

(47) A sacred place of peace, however crude it may be, is a distinctly human need, as opposed to shelter, which is a distinctly animal need.

(48) The gardens of the homeless, which are in effect homeless gardens, introduce form into an urban environment where it either didn’t exist or was not discernible as such.

(49) most of us give in to a demoralization of spirit which we usually blame on some psychological conditions, until one day we find ourselves in a garden and feel the oppression vanish as if by magic.

(50) It is this implicit or explicit reference to nature that fully justifies the use of word garden, though in a “liberated” sense, to describe these synthetic constructions.

(46) It is also the reason why when we try to describe music with words, all we can do is articulate our reactions to it, and not grasp music itself.

(47) By all accounts he was a freethinking person, and a courageous one, and I find courage an essential quality for the understanding, let alone the performance, of his works.

(48) Beethoven’s habit of increasing the volume with an extreme intensity and then abruptly following it with a sudden soft passage was only rarely used by composers before him.

(49) Especially significant was his view of freedom, which, for him, was associated with the rights and responsibilities of the individual: he advocated freedom of thought and of personal expression.

(50) One could interpret much of the work of Beethoven by saying that suffering is inevitable, but the courage to fight it renders life worth living.