Awe

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether the union of the two natures in Christ is the greatest of all unions?Objection 1: It would seem that the union of the two natures in Christ is not the greatest of all unions. For what is united falls short of the unity of what is one, since what is united is by participation, but one is by essence. Now in created things there are some that are simply one, as is shown especially in unity itself, which is the principle of number. Therefore the union of which we are speaking does not imply the greatest of all unions. Objection 2: Further, the greater the distance between things united, the less the union. Now, the things united by this union are most distant—namely, the Divine and human natures; for they are infinitely apart. Therefore their union is the least of all. Objection 3: Further, from union there results one. But from the union of soul and body in us there arises what is one in person and nature; whereas from the union of the Divine and human nature there results what is one in person only. Therefore the union of soul and body is greater than that of the Divine and human natures; and hence the union of which we speak does not imply the greatest unity. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. i, 10) that “man is in the Son of God, more than the Son in the Father.” But the Son is in the Father by unity of essence, and man is in the Son by the union of the Incarnation. Therefore the union of the Incarnation is greater than the unity of the Divine Essence, which nevertheless is the greatest union; and thus the union of the Incarnation implies the greatest unity. I answer that, Union implies the joining of several in some one thing. Therefore the union of the Incarnation may be taken in two ways: first, in regard to the things united; secondly, in regard to that in which they are united. And in this regard this union has a pre-eminence over other unions; for the unity of the Divine Person, in which the two natures are united, is the greatest. But it has no pre-eminence in regard to the things united.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The Egyptian desert, in late antiquity, was to prove the birthplace of new archetypes of human spirituality. With its barren horizons, the simple ecology of life on the edges of civilization provided a rarefied backdrop. Here men—and some women—wrestled with sin, stared down the devil, and sought internal transformation. In the desert tales of penitent prostitutes, the features of the moral landscape are simple. The women themselves are sketched in little detail. The focus of the brief encounter is the father—his steadfastness, his grace. The tales are monastic from start to finish; even in the prostitute’s lair, the monk brings with him the whiff of the desert. The chief elements of the drama are sin and repentance. We are in a world where sin is inextricable from the machinations of the devil and his demons. In this setting, the significance of the girl’s prostitution is not that it places her outside of respectable society. It is, rather, that it arrays her with the forces of evil. Her repentance is not just the recovery of a most abandoned sinner. A victory over fornication is a defeat over Satan’s legions. The monks who induce the conversion of the prostitute are like a modern sports team that courts away its rival’s most valuable player. The desert tales of penitent prostitutes are allegories of sin and salvation, played out against the grander cosmic battle between good and evil. The literary side is only one half of her story, for in the same period, in the late fourth and then more explosively in the fifth century, the penitent prostitute, modeled on the “sinful woman” in the Gospel of Luke, becomes a popular subject for Christian preachers. Her tearful repentance proved congenial to homilists in an age of mass conversion. The currency of these legends, already in the late fourth century, is also confirmed in a most unlikely source: the rhetorical handbook of the pagan sophist of Antioch, Libanius. In one of his training exercises, Libanius creates a penitent pagan prostitute. She represents the cross-pollination of Christianity and philosophical paganism in the fourth century. The word “repentance” is glaringly absent (instead she “becomes chaste”), but the mood is entirely Christian. “I purify my mind. I flee Aphrodite, I prefer the clemency of Athena.” The speech spoke of prostitution in terms of “pollution,” and there was a clear religious subtext to the speech: the prostitute fled Aphrodite, preferring chaste Athena. Even so, Libanius could not resist insinuating that Aphrodite was wrongfully accused of perversion. The prostitute wanted to set up a law telling women in prostitution that they had the capacity to become pure and to flee—a full generation before Theodosius II would actually do so. The speech was a fictional school exercise, to be sure, but nevertheless represents a remarkable statement from a late pagan intellectual eager to defend the sexual integrity of his religion. The speech might be considered a pagan apology, written in response to the avant-garde of Christian sexuality.51

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  By comparison to other birds, the major changes in wing anatomy that Bostwick discovered in Club-winged Manakins are truly startling. The ulnas of other manakins are simple hollow, columnar tubes. But the ulnas of male Club-winged Manakins are so wildly different they are nearly unidentifiable as the same bone. They are four times wider and three times larger in volume than those of other manakins, despite actually being shorter in length. The upper surface of the ulna of male Club-wings also features a prominent, wide shelf with deep sculpted grooves and peaks for ligamentous attachments to the oscillating secondary feathers. There is nothing else like it in any other bird in the world. Even more surprisingly, however, the ulnas of male Club-winged Manakins are solid bone, and the calcium in these bones is two or three times denser than in the wing bones of other manakins. In contrast, more than half the volume of other manakin ulnas is occupied by a hollow internal space. In fact, every other species of bird on the planet has hollow ulnas. Even theropod dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor have hollow ulnas! Thus, in order to sing their wing feather songs, male Club-winged Manakins have dramatically transformed anatomical features of their wings that have been consistently present for over 150 million years. Sexual selection for these innovative wing songs has forced male Club-winged Manakins to abandon a forelimb bone design that even predates bird flight itself. Kim Bostwick hypothesized that the broader, solid ulna and its complex surface for attachment of feather ligaments function in two ways: to enhance stridulatory sound production by providing a more substantial, fixed anchor for the base of the feathers; and to enhance the resonance and coupling among secondary feathers within the wing. Clearly, the wings of male Club-winged Manakins have evolved to serve two completely distinct functions—flight and tonal song production. Apparently, their wing bones cannot do both jobs equally well with the traditional anatomical design shared by all other flying birds (and even some of their nonflying ancestors). Some anatomical compromise is necessary. However, compromise in the design of wing morphology to accommodate song production is highly likely to create new survival and energetic costs to males. In the field, it is easy to see that male Club-wings fly awkwardly. There are no data yet on how the bizarre ulna morphology of male Club-wings affects their flight mechanics and energetics. But it is nearly impossible to imagine that the multiple anatomical changes to flight feathers, wing bones, and muscles necessary for singing these wing songs do not diminish male flight capacity, maneuverability, flight performance, and energetic efficiency.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxii.) Having shewn that it is not right to be anxious about food, He passes to that which is less; (for raiment is not so necessary as food;) and asks, And why are ye careful wherewith ye shall be clothed? He uses not here the instance of the birds, when He might have drawn some to the point, as the peacock, or the swan, but brings forward the lilies, saying, Consider the lilies of the field. He would prove in two things the abundant goodness of God; to wit, the richness of the beauty with which they are clothed, and the mean value of the things so clothed with it. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. in Mont. ii. 15.) The things instanced are not to be allegorized so that we enquire what is denoted by the birds of the air, or the lilies of the field; they are only examples to prove God’s care for the greater from His care for the less. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. For lilies within a fixed time are formed into branches, clothed in whiteness, and endowed with sweet odour, God conveying by an unseen operation, what the earth had not given to the root. But in all the same perfectness is observed, that they may not be thought to have been formed by chance, but may be known to be ordered by God’s providence. When He says, They toil not, He speaks for the comfort of men; Neither do they spin, for the women. CHRYSOSTOM. He forbids not labour but carefulness, both here and above when He spoke of sowing. GLOSS. (non occ.) And for the greater exaltation of God’s providence in those things that are beyond human industry, He adds, I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. JEROME. For, in sooth, what regal purple, what silk, what web of divers colours from the loom, may vie with flowers? What work of man has the red blush of the rose? the pure white of the lily? How the Tyrian dye yields to the violet, sight alone and not words can express. CHRYSOSTOM. As widely as truth differs from falsehood, so widely do our clothes differ from flowers. If then Solomon, who was more eminent than all other kings, was yet surpassed by flowers, how shall you exceed the beauty of flowers by your garments? And Solomon was exceeded by the flowers not once only, or twice, but throughout his whole reign; and this is that He says, In all his glory; for no one day was he arrayed as are the flowers. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Or the meaning may be, that Solomon though he toiled not for his own raiment, yet he gave command for the making of it. But where command is, there is often found both offence of them that minister, and wrath of him that commands. When then any are without these things, then they are arrayed as are the lilies.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Twelve to twenty of these lovely golden spheres radiate in a line from the base to the tip of each secondary feather. I refer to these round golden patches as “spheres” because they are exquisitely and subtly counter-shaded, as if by the skillful brush of a painter, to create a stunningly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional depth. The golden tan at the center of the sphere is outlined from below with a dark, mascara-like smudge, creating the impression of a shadow being cast. On the opposite side of the circle, the golden yellow blends subtly into a bright white crescent that looks like a “specular” highlight—like the shine from the surface of a glossy round apple. As Darwin noted, the color shading on each sphere is precisely oriented so that when the secondary feathers are suspended above and around the female in the giant cone, they produce the startling impression that the golden spheres are three-dimensional objects suspended in space and illuminated from above as if by a shaft of light piercing through the forest canopy. The three-dimensional illusion is further enhanced by the fact that when the male holds these secondary feathers up in the air during the display, ambient light will be transmitted through these unpigmented white highlights, giving them an extra brilliant and luminous quality. [image "(Left) The “golden spheres” on the male Great Argus secondary feathers gradually increase in size toward the tip of the feather. (Right) A forced perspective illusion makes the spheres appear to be nearly uniform in size when viewed at an angle, similar to the view of the female during the display. Photos by Michael Doolittle." file=image_rsrc3MT.jpg] (Left) The “golden spheres” on the male Great Argus secondary feathers gradually increase in size toward the tip of the feather. (Right) A forced perspective illusion makes the spheres appear to be nearly uniform in size when viewed at an angle, similar to the view of the female during the display. Photos by Michael Doolittle. An additional optical illusion is created by the fact that the golden spheres at the bottom of each secondary wing feather are about half an inch wide at the base and gradually increase in size to over an inch wide at the tip. Because the spots become physically larger the farther they are from the female’s eye, they appear to create a forced perspective illusion in which the spheres appear uniform in size from her point of view. Taken together, the elements of the male display add up to a sensory experience of mind-boggling complexity—a throbbing, shimmering hemisphere of three hundred vertically illuminated golden spheres that instantaneously appear suspended in the air against a feathery background tapestry of speckles, dots, and swirls. The golden balls emanate outward from the center of the display, where the male’s black eye and blue face can be glimpsed peeking out. The whole effect is magnificent.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  He had a tremendous baritone voice that was strong and clear. It startled both me and the guard, who stopped his pushing. I’m pressing on, the upward way New heights I’m gaining, every day Still praying as, I’m onward bound Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground. It was an old hymn they used to sing all the time in the church where I grew up. I hadn’t heard it in years. Henry sang slowly and with great sincerity and conviction. It took a moment before the officer recovered and resumed pushing him out the door. Because his ankles were shackled and his hands were locked behind his back, Henry almost stumbled when the guard shoved him forward. He had to waddle to keep his balance, but he kept on singing. I could hear him as he went down the hall: Lord lift me up, and let me stand By faith on Heaven’s tableland A higher plane, that I have found Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground. I sat down, completely stunned. Henry’s voice was filled with desire. I experienced his song as a precious gift. I had come into the prison with such anxiety and fear about his willingness to tolerate my inadequacy. I didn’t expect him to be compassionate or generous. I had no right to expect anything from a condemned man on death row. Yet he gave me an astonishing measure of his humanity. In that moment, Henry altered something in my understanding of human potential, redemption, and hopefulness. I finished my internship committed to helping the death row prisoners I had met that month. Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person’s humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own. I went back to law school with an intense desire to understand the laws and doctrines that sanctioned the death penalty and extreme punishments. I piled up courses on constitutional law, litigation, appellate procedure, federal courts, and collateral remedies. I did extra work to broaden my understanding of how constitutional theory shapes criminal procedure. I plunged deeply into the law and the sociology of race, poverty, and power. Law school had seemed abstract and disconnected before, but after meeting the desperate and imprisoned, it all became relevant and critically important. Even my studies at the Kennedy School took on a new significance. Developing the skills to quantify and deconstruct the discrimination and inequality I saw became urgent and meaningful. My short time on death row revealed that there was something missing in the way we treat people in our judicial system, that maybe we judge some people unfairly.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  We have already shown that God’s goodness is the reason for His willing other things to exist, and that by His will He brought things into being. Therefore the love whereby He loves His own goodness is the cause of things being created. Hence, as stated at the beginning of the Metaphysics, certain philosophers of old said that the love of the gods was the cause of all things. Dionysius also says that God’s love did not allow him to be fruitless. Now we established in the foregoing chapter that the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love whereby God loves Himself. Hence the Holy Ghost is the cause of the creation: and this is indicated (Ps. 103:30): Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created. Also, seeing that the Holy Ghost proceeds by way of love, and that love is an impelling and moving force, any movement that God causes in things is rightly appropriated to the Holy Ghost. Now the first change wrought by God in things is that whereby he produced the various species out of formless created matter. Wherefore Holy Scripture ascribes this work to the Holy Ghost: thus it is said (Gen. 1:2): The Spirit of God moved over the waters. For Augustine would have the waters to signify the primary matter over which the Spirit of the Lord is said to move, not as being in motion, but as the principle of movement. Again. God’s government of the world is understood to be a kind of movement, forasmuch as God directs and moves all things to their respective ends. Accordingly if impulse and movement belong to the Holy Ghost as love, it is fitting that government and increase be ascribed to the Holy Ghost. Hence it is said (Job 33:4): The Spirit of God made me; and (Ps. 142:10): Thy good Spirit shall lead me into the right land. And, since to govern subjects is the proper function of a lord, it is fitting that lordship be ascribed to the Holy Ghost: thus the Apostle says (2 Cor. 3:17): Now the Lord is a Spirit: and we say in the Creed: I believe in the Holy Ghost, Lord. Again. Life is revealed especially in movement: for we say that a thing lives when it moves itself, and in a general way we ascribe life to all things that move themselves to action. If then impulse and movement are ascribed to the Holy Ghost as love, life also is fittingly ascribed to Him. Thus it is said (Jo. 6:64): It is the Spirit that quickeneth: and (Ezech. 37:6): I will give you Spirit and you shall live. Also, in the Creed we confess our belief in the Holy Ghost, the life-giver. This is in harmony with the name spirit: for an animal’s body lives by the vital spirit which is diffused throughout its members by the principle of life. CHAPTER XXI

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  9. And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. JEROME. While they thought only of an earthly tabernacle of boughs or tents, they are overshadowed by the covering of a bright cloud; While he yet spake, there came a bright cloud and overshadowed them. (Exod. 19:9, 16.) CHRYSOSTOM. When the Lord threatens, He shews a dark cloud, as on Sinai; but here where He sought not to terrify but to teach, there appeared a bright cloud. ORIGEN. The bright cloud overshadowing the Saints is the Power of the Father, or perhaps the Holy Spirit; or I may also venture to call the Saviour that bright cloud which overshadows the Gospel, the Law, and the Prophets, as they understand who can behold His light in all these three. JEROME. Forasmuch as Peter had asked unwisely, he deserves not any answer; but the Father makes answer for the Son, that the Lord’s word might be fulfilled, He that sent me, he beareth witness of me. (John 5:37.) CHRYSOSTOM. Neither Moses, nor Elias speak, but the Father greater than all sends a voice out of the cloud, that the disciples might believe that this voice was from God. For God has ordinarily shewn Himself in a cloud, as it is written, Clouds and darkness are round about Him; (Ps. 97:2.) and this is what is said, Behold, a voice out of the cloud. JEROME. The voice of the Father is heard speaking from heaven, giving testimony to the Son, and teaching Peter the truth, taking away his error, and through Peter the other disciples also; whence he proceeds, This is my beloved Son. For Him make the tabernacle, Him obey; this is the Son, they are but servants; and they also ought as you to make ready a tabernacle for the Lord in the inmost parts of their heart. CHRYSOSTOM. Fear not then, Peter; for if God is mighty, it is manifest that the Son is also mighty; wherefore if He is loved, fear not thou; for none forsakes Him whom He loves; nor dost thou love Him equally with the Father. Neither does He love Him merely because He begot Him, but because He is of one will with Himself; as it follows, In whom I am well pleased; which is to say, in whom I rest content, whom I accept, for all things of the Father He performs with care, and His will is one with the Father; so if He will to be crucified, do not then speak against it.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  During the century-long intellectual eclipse of mate choice theory, biologists were hard-pressed to explain the reason for aesthetic extremities like those of the Great Argus. William Beebe described Darwin’s theory as intellectually tempting—“Darwin’s ideas are those which we human beings would prefer to accept”—but ultimately unpersuasive. Given his low opinion of the cognitive and aesthetic capacities of female pheasants, Beebe simply could not accept the idea of sexual selection: “It seems impossible to conceive, much as we would like to believe in it, and personally, I should be willing to strain a point here and there to admit this pleasant psychologically aesthetic possibility; but I cannot.” Then how did Beebe explain the evolution of the male Great Argus? He could not. He concluded, “It is one of those cases where we should be brave enough to say, ‘I do not know.’ ” Ironically, a man who spent years of his life tracking down the displays of this fabulously beautiful creature, and many other pheasants, found Darwin’s explanation for its beauty “impossible.” This is a real measure of the intellectual loss that followed in the wake of Wallace’s rout of Darwin’s theory of mate choice. Today, however, all biologists embrace the fundamental concept of mate choice. Thus there is complete consensus that the ornamental plumage and behavior of the Great Argus have evolved through the agency of female sexual preferences and desire—that is, sexual choice. We now agree that ornament evolves because individuals have the capacity, and the freedom, to choose their mates, and they choose the mates whose ornaments they prefer. In the process of choosing what they like, choosers evolutionarily transform both the objects of their desires and the form of their own desires. It is a true coevolutionary dance between beauty and desire. What biologists don’t agree on is whether mating preferences evolve for those ornaments that provide consistently honest, practical information—about good genes or direct benefits like health, vigor, cognitive ability, or other attributes that would help the chooser—or whether they are merely meaningless, arbitrary (albeit fabulous) results of coevolutionary fashion. Actually, most biologists are in agreement with the former hypothesis. I am not. More precisely, I think that adaptive mate choice can occur but it is probably rather rare, whereas the mechanisms of mate choice envisioned by Darwin and Fisher, and modeled by Lande and Kirkpatrick, are likely to be nearly ubiquitous. But it nonetheless remains true that since Darwin’s Descent of Man the beauty-as-utility argument has been rampantly successful. The purpose of this chapter is to show how this flawed consensus persists. It persists in large part because it has been propped up by an unscientific faith in the ultimate validity of its own conclusions. —

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Another exciting implication of this aesthetic view of life is the realization that coevolutionary change is the fundamental feature underlying all aesthetic phenomena, including the human arts. As explained throughout this book, the evolution of sexual ornaments like the peacock’s tail involves the corresponding coevolution of the peahen’s cognitive aesthetic preferences. Changes in mating preferences have transformed the tail, and changes in the tail have transformed mating preferences. We can see a similar coevolutionary process at work in the fine arts. Mozart, for example, composed symphonies and operas that transformed his audiences’ capacity to imagine what music could be and do. These new musical preferences then fed back upon future composers and performers to advance the classical style in Western music. Likewise, Manet, van Gogh, and Cézanne created paintings that pushed the genre of European painting beyond its previous bounds. The newly transformed aesthetic preferences of their audiences fed back upon new generations of artists, collectors, and museums, ultimately leading to Cubism, Dada, and other modernist art movements of the early twentieth century. These cultural mechanisms of aesthetic change in the human arts are inherently coevolutionary as well. Once we understand that all art is the result of a coevolutionary historical process between audience and artist—a coevolutionary dance between display and desire, expression and taste—we must expand our conception of what art is and can be. We cannot define art by the objective qualities of an artwork nor by any special qualities of observer experience (that is, art is not merely in the eye of the beholder). Being an artwork means being the product of a historical process of aesthetic coevolution. In other words, art is a form of communication that coevolves with its own evaluation. This coevolutionary definition of art implies that art necessarily emerges within an aesthetic community, or population of aesthetic producers and evaluators. In a now classic paper of aesthetic philosophy from 1964, Arthur Danto called this taste-making, aesthetic community “the artworld.” This new, coevolutionary definition of art opens up an entirely new connection between evolutionary biology and the arts. Perhaps the most revolutionary consequence of this definition of art is that it means that bird songs, sexual displays, animal-pollinated flowers, fruits, and so on are art, too. They are biotic arts that have emerged within myriad biotic artworlds, each of them a community that fostered the coevolution of animal aesthetic traits and preferences over time.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  These stories of Christian girls who escaped from the brothel are minor but revealing marks of a closely shared imaginative space, and they point to the central place of sex in the fictional economy of both traditions. The writings known, somewhat unhappily, under the moniker of the apocryphal Acts of the apostles, bear a telling family resemblance to contemporary Greek novelistic writing. The apocryphal Acts are the primary vehicle of early Christian romance. The apostles, the wandering heroes of early Christianity, were an endlessly fertile source of Christian legend. Close to the divine presence, the aura of the miraculous clung to them. The institutional church claimed descent from them. The canonical scriptures testified to their historicity but left ample room to the imagination. An enormous body of Christian legend, continuously reshaped, came to attach to the heroic generation. The Acts are adventure stories, but unlike the pagan novels the Acts are historical romances, set against a backdrop recognizable as the Roman Empire of the first century. As in the pagan romance, travel and serial endangerments hold together the structure, which is episodic, sensational. The apostles are miracle workers, endowed above all with the wondrous ability to resurrect the dead. They are also preachers who come to be arrested by the Roman authorities. The apocryphal Acts , like the romances but to an even greater degree, are forensic dramas. The gathering tension between apostolic missionizing and the Roman order inevitably resolves into a judicial conflict. The apostle, in the end, is martyred, so that death substitutes for marriage as the common ending of the apostle’s story. Between the travel, miracle working, and martyrdom of the apostles, sex continually juts into the foreground of the stories. Sex functions as a primary symbolic code in the world of Christian legend, but in a radically reformulated sense. Christian romances not only preach a new model of proper sexual conduct, they also discovered a way of expressing a strikingly original romance of the eternal soul, in which this world of flux and regeneration is a façade and the reunion with God, through purity and death, is the ultimate consummation. “Nothing of yours endures, but all things, right down to human conventions, are transient.”31

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  [image file=image_rsrc3N3.jpg] CHAPTER 4Aesthetic Innovation and DecadenceIn the understory of a mossy cloud forest in the western Andes of Ecuador, a small cocoa-brown bird with a red fore crown sings from a slim perch. Bip-Bip-WANNGG! The tonal sound rings like feedback from an elfin electric guitar. Three other males within earshot call back in rapid response with increasing excitement. These are territorial male Club-winged Manakins (Machaeropterus deliciosus) at a lek displaying to attract mates. The strange acoustic quality of their songs is associated with an even stranger movement. Instead of opening their beaks to make their electronic-sounding songs, the male Club-wings flick their wings open at their sides to make the initial Bips and then snap their wings up over their backs to set their swollen and twisted inner wing feathers into rapid sideways oscillation to produce the extraordinary WANNGG sound (color plate 12). These male Club-winged Manakins are singing with their wings. We have seen that many other manakins make pop and snap sounds with their wing feathers during courtship display. White-throated Manakins make a loud pop as they stall in flight over their display logs. White-bearded Manakins make their explosive snaps as they leap between the display court and the surrounding saplings, and they produce a loud flatulent roll—a rapid series of snaps—while perched above their courts. The many variations on snap, crackle, and pop in the manakins are all feather sounds. The existence of these nonvocal communication sounds is evolutionarily baffling, because manakins all have perfectly good vocal songs that remain an important part of their aesthetic repertoires. Why would any species—let alone many separate species—evolve an entirely new way to sing when the traditional avian vocal songs had been working fine, even gloriously, for over seventy million years? Like eyes, limbs, and feathers, the mechanical sounds of manakins are examples of evolutionary innovations—entirely novel biological features that are not homologous with any ancestral, or antecedent, feature. Evolutionary innovations are intellectually exciting because they require more than simple, incremental, quantitative change—more than mere evolutionary tinkering, if you will. Innovations involve the evolution of genuinely new phenomena and features, or qualitative evolutionary novelties. [image "The male White-bearded Manakin produces the roll-snap wing sound by clapping its wings together rapidly over its back." file=image_rsrc3N4.jpg] The male White-bearded Manakin produces the roll-snap wing sound by clapping its wings together rapidly over its back.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  This interest ultimately led her to a duck farm in the Central Valley of California in 2009. Although a duck farm is not an obvious place to pursue new frontiers of evolutionary science, the farm Brennan went to had some very special ducks. These drakes were trained to ejaculate semen into tiny glass bottles. This was done not to satisfy some perverse interest in duck sex but because the duck farmers wanted to create offspring that are a hybrid of male Muscovy Ducks (Cairina moschata) and female Pekin ducks (a captive breed of Mallard). In captivity, such hybrids show extraordinary vigor and put on weight rapidly—two qualities that are very attractive to duck farmers. But the Muscovy and Pekin ducks do not like each other, and if they are left to their own devices in a common pen, they will not mate at high enough rates to produce a commercially viable number of offspring. Modern agriculture’s answer to this problem is artificial insemination, which requires some way of collecting the sperm. Hence the use of the little glass bottles. All of which explains why one day the Latino workers who collected the sperm and performed the artificial inseminations at this farm were confronted with a lovely, well-educated, wise, and wisecracking Latina toting a high-speed video camera. As the videos showed, male Muscovy ducks will perform on demand—despite the little glass bottles, the scrutiny of the camera, and the glare of the lights. The basic artificial insemination procedure goes like this: Male and female Muscovys are kept in separate pens to increase their sexual motivation. When it’s time for the sperm collection to occur, the pair of ducks is placed in a narrow cage with their rear ends facing out of one open side. The male rapidly mounts the female and begins to tread on her back. The female becomes readily sexually receptive, as indicated by her reclining precopulatory posture: her neck extended forward, head lowered, rear end raised with the cloaca exposed, dilated, and secreting volumes of mucus. Soon, the male begins to lower himself toward the female’s proffered rear. And then it happens. Normally, the erection of the drake would take place into the female reproductive tract. During sperm collection, however, the farmworker prevents the male from actually entering the female and places what looks like a small glass milk bottle over the male’s cloaca at just the right moment. The drake’s penis then erects and ejaculates into the bottle. As in a discreet sperm bank, the sample is then passed through a little window into the hand of another worker who prepares it for the Pekin females who are waiting in the room next door. For Brennan’s research observations, the farmers still prevented the male from entering the female but allowed him to erect and ejaculate into the air, or into the special glass contraptions that Brennan brought along on her next trip to the duck farm (more about those later).

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Patty is nothing if not creative, however, and to test our hypothesis, she came up with the idea of creating four glass tubes that would help us analyze the interplay between the male and the female reproductive equipment. Two of the tubes would be designed not to challenge the progress of the duck penis in the vaginal tract. One would be straight; the other would be coiled counterclockwise to match the spiral of the duck penis itself. The other two tubes would be designed to act like a steeplechase obstacle course for the avian penis, mimicking the shape of the female reproductive tract in breeding season. One would be a tube with a hairpin turn similar to the female cul-de-sacs near the cloaca, and the second a tube with a clockwise coil like the upper reaches of the duck vagina. The diameters of all the tubes were to be the same; they would differ only in the shape of the interior space. We hypothesized that the duck penis would proceed without problems through the straight and counterclockwise spiral tubes. Conversely, we hypothesized that the tubes with the female-like hairpin turn and the clockwise spirals could frustrate erection and prevent complete entry. Although glass tubes are nothing like the real thing, they have the advantage of providing a standard rigidity and uniformly smooth surface that would control for all mechanical factors other than the shape of the tube, which was the critical element of the hypothesis we wanted to test. The glass tubes would be unnatural but objective and fair. Plus, glass is clear, so we could observe and record on video the progress of the erecting duck penis down the tube. To find someone to make the glass tubes, Patty and I went to talk to Daryl Smith at the Yale University Department of Chemistry Scientific Glassblowing Laboratory. The motto over the door read, “If not for glass, science would be blind.” The display cases in the hallway leading up to the shop were filled with complex glass apparatuses with elaborate condensing coils, leading to flasks and bulbs leading to tubes with charcoal filters, and so on. Business was booming. Waiting outside the door was a line of students, each holding drawings of new designs they wanted to be made for their research, proof if any were needed that this classic art form is still a critical part of the science of chemistry. When our turn came to talk to Smith, we gave him a short introduction to the reproductive biology of ducks, to explain why we wanted him to make artificial duck vaginas in various shapes. We discussed the possible designs. Once we had decided on the final specifications, I asked Smith, “So, is this the weirdest request you ever had?” “Well,” he responded, “I’ve been asked to make artificial vaginas before, but never for ducks!” We didn’t inquire further about this previous request.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Since this science is partly speculative and partly practical, it transcends all others speculative and practical. Now one speculative science is said to be nobler than another, either by reason of its greater certitude, or by reason of the higher worth of its subject-matter. In both these respects this science surpasses other speculative sciences; in point of greater certitude, because other sciences derive their certitude from the natural light of human reason, which can err; whereas this derives its certitude from the light of divine knowledge, which cannot be misled: in point of the higher worth of its subject-matter because this science treats chiefly of those things which by their sublimity transcend human reason; while other sciences consider only those things which are within reason’s grasp. Of the practical sciences, that one is nobler which is ordained to a further purpose, as political science is nobler than military science; for the good of the army is directed to the good of the State. But the purpose of this science, in so far as it is practical, is eternal bliss; to which as to an ultimate end the purposes of every practical science are directed. Hence it is clear that from every standpoint, it is nobler than other sciences. Reply to Objection 1: It may well happen that what is in itself the more certain may seem to us the less certain on account of the weakness of our intelligence, “which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun” (Metaph. ii, lect. i). Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain nature of the truths, but to the weakness of human intelligence; yet the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things, as is said in de Animalibus xi. Reply to Objection 2: This science can in a sense depend upon the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer. For it accepts its principles not from other sciences, but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it does not depend upon other sciences as upon the higher, but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as handmaidens: even so the master sciences make use of the sciences that supply their materials, as political of military science. That it thus uses them is not due to its own defect or insufficiency, but to the defect of our intelligence, which is more easily led by what is known through natural reason (from which proceed the other sciences) to that which is above reason, such as are the teachings of this science.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  REMIGIUS. And it should be known, that the meaning not only of this passage, but of many others also, is supported by this testimony from the Prophet. The words, Behold my servant, may be referred to the place in which the Father had said above, This is my Son. (Mat. 3:17.) The words, I will put my Spirit upon him, is referred to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Lord at His baptism; He shall declare judgment to the Gentiles, to that which He says below, When the Son of Man shall sit in the seat of his Majesty. (Mat. 25:31) What he adds, He shall not strive nor cry, refers to the Lord how He answered but little to the Chief Priests, and to Pilate, but to Herod nothing at all. He shall not break the bruised reed, refers to His shunning His persecutors that they might not be made worse; and that In his name shall the Gentiles hope, refers to what Himself says below, Go ye, and teach all nations. (Mat. 28:19) 12:22–2422. Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. 23. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the Son of David? 24. But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. GLOSS. (non occ.) The Lord had refuted the Pharisees above, when they brought false charges against the miracles of Christ, as if He had broken the sabbath in doing them. But inasmuch as with a yet greater wickedness they perversely attributed the miracles of Christ done by divine power to an unclean spirit, therefore the Evangelist places first the miracle from which they had taken occasion to blaspheme, saying, Then was brought to him one that had a dæmon, blind and dumb. REMIGIUS. The word Then refers to that above, where having healed the man who had the withered hand, He went out of the synagogue. Or it may be taken of a more extended time; Then, namely, when these things were being done or said. CHRYSOSTOM. We may wonder at the wickedness of the dæmon; he had obstructed both inlets by which he could believe, namely, hearing and sight. But Christ opened both, whence it follows, And he healed him., insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. JEROME. Three miracles were wrought in one and the same person at the same time; the blind sees, the dumb speaks, the possessed is delivered from the dæmon. This was at that time done in the flesh, but is now daily being fulfilled in the conversion of them that believe; the dæmon is cast out when they first behold the light of the faith, and then their mouths which had before been stopped are opened to utter the praises of God.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  But how is it, then, that the mate the female chooses can manage to overcome the twists and whorls of her defensive anatomy? How does voluntary sex differ from forced? We do not have any direct observations of the inner workings—again, MRI technology would need to take a huge leap forward and arrive in the barnyard to deliver such data. But, as mentioned above, Patty’s duck-farm observations revealed that when female Muscovys were actively soliciting copulations, they assumed the conspicuously horizontal precopulatory display posture, dilated the cloacal muscles, and released copious amounts of lubricating mucus. It seems clear that females can make the reproductive tract a fully functioning and welcoming place when they want to. To return once again to McCracken’s question—what are the ridiculously long penises of these ducks doing inside the female’s body? The answer turns out to be, “It depends.” If the copulation is solicited, then clearly the female is in for the full ride. These penile structures can easily penetrate to the upper reaches of her reproductive tract if only momentarily. However, if the copulation is resisted by the female, then the penis’s length and surface features are designed, evolutionarily speaking, to try to overcome the barriers imposed by female vaginal complexity. In the text above, I didn’t use the metaphor of the forbidding cliff face lightly. It’s clear that the ridges and hooks on the penis have evolved precisely for the purpose of helping it to claw its way through the various structures within the duck’s vagina that are designed to keep it out. However, by being overwhelmingly successful at bottling up the penis during forced intromission, and preventing the vast majority of attempts at forced fertilizations, female ducks have managed to maintain the advantage in this sexual arms race. Even in the face of persistent sexual violence, female ducks have been able to assert and advance their sexual autonomy—their individual freedom to control paternity through their own mate choices. This is a dark evolutionary tale with an amazing and profoundly redemptive outcome. What we learn from our investigations into duck sex is that despite the ubiquity of sexual violence in these breeding systems, female mate choice continues to predominate. Consequently, male plumages, songs, and displays continue to evolve. Beauty continues to thrive, even in the face of pervasive, violent attempts to subvert the freedom of mate choice that creates it. However, female sexual autonomy is not a form of female power over males. It is merely a mechanism for the assurance of freedom of mate choice. Female ducks do not exert sexual control over males, and they can always be turned down by the mates they prefer. Females do not, indeed cannot, evolve to assert power over others in response to sexual violence. Rather, females can only evolve to assert their own freedom of choice.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Manakins are just one small piece of a vast tapestry of avian beauty. There are over ten thousand species of birds in the world, ranging from the plainest of sparrows to the most exquisite of manakins. Because every single bird species exhibits some specific sexual ornaments that are employed in courtship communication and mate choice, it is clear that the capacity for mate choice in birds originated in an ancestor common to all birds, perhaps even in a lineage of feathered theropod dinosaurs dating all the way back to the Jurassic. From this single common ancestor, the repertoire of aesthetic traits and mating preferences has continued to coevolve and radiate into the many thousands of distinct forms of avian beauty that exist today. On different phylogenetic branches at different times, the pace of coevolutionary change has slowed or increased as new ecologies have contributed to variations in breeding systems and parental care arrangements, which in turn have given rise to tremendous variation in the nature and strength of sexual selection by mate choice. Along the way, mate preferences have continued to evolve in various avian lineages, sometimes occurring in both sexes, sometimes in females only, or, much less often, in males only, and the aesthetic repertoires of the sexes have coevolved accordingly. Each lineage and species has evolved along its own distinctive and unpredictable aesthetic trajectory. The result has been the flowering of more than ten thousand distinctive aesthetic worlds comprising over ten thousand coevolved repertoires of displays and desires. Something comparable has occurred on myriad different branches across the entire Tree of Life. From poison dart frogs and chameleons to peacock spiders and balloon flies, whenever the social opportunity and sensory/cognitive capacity for mate choice has arisen, an aesthetic evolutionary process has taken hold. This aesthetic evolutionary process has arisen hundreds or thousands of times during the history of life, even in plants that have evolved ornamental flowers of distinct shapes, sizes, colors, and fragrances to seduce animal pollinators into dispersing their gametes (in the form of pollen) to other flowers waiting to be fertilized. Throughout the living world whenever the opportunity has arisen, the subjective experiences and cognitive choices of animals have aesthetically shaped the evolution of biodiversity. The history of beauty in nature is a vast and never-ending story.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Again. If Christ atoned sufficiently for the sins of mankind, there would be no need to seek further forgiveness of one’s sins. And yet all who have their salvation at heart seek forgiveness. Therefore Christ did not take away the sins of mankind sufficiently. These and like arguments might appeal to some as indicating that the doctrine of the Catholic Faith about the Incarnation is inconsistent with the majesty and wisdom of God. CHAPTER LIV THAT IT WAS FITTING FOR GOD TO BE INCARNATENEVERTHELESS, if we consider the mystery of the Incarnation carefully and reverently, we shall discover such a depth of divine wisdom, as will surpass all human knowledge; according to the saying of the Apostle (1 Cor. 1:25), The foolishness of God is wiser than men. Hence it is that those who study this mystery with reverence discover more and more its marvellous secrets.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  She never strays from the balance between warmth and strength, which is evident when she gently suggests, “You should really do the talking.” Early in the call she introduces me to the White House staff and I follow her lead, finally at ease, picking up the tone of her can-do stoicism. I’m in awe as the folks in Washington defer to her, because it’s understood to everyone in her presence that even without a hint of condescension, Geraldine Ferraro knows more than you do. For the twenty minutes I’m questioned on the roles of the black, South Asian Indian, and Middle Eastern leaders in New York, Gerry offers assuring nods—at one point, even a wink. After the call, she rests her arms on the chair she’s sitting in across from me. “Regina,” she ponders, “I think I could use your help on something.” I perk up, pretending I’m not completely spent. “I’m working on a book about my mother. She was the daughter of an Italian immigrant who made a lot of sacrifices to provide my brother and me a chance to mainstream as Americans.” Mainstream?! I want tell her. I’d say you’ve done more than mainstreamed! Instead, I politely lean forward with my hands in my lap. “Yes, Ms. Ferraro?” “Please,” she says. “Call me Gerry.” Gerry speaks about her mother, Antonetta—dropping phrases like widow after my father’s death and worked as a bead maker in the South Bronx . . . but in my head I’m watching a movie reel of Gerry’s many extraordinary achievements: She built a strong family with her husband, John; she rose to become Queens Assistant District Attorney heading up the Sex Crimes Unit. She became a U.S. congresswoman, and in 1984 became the first woman to be nominated as a vice presidential candidate for a major party. I tune back in when she says, “This is where I need you, Regina: I plan to dedicate the last chapter to present-day female immigrants by highlighting the sacrifices they’re making to give their children a chance at opportunities that wouldn’t be available outside of America. You’re so well-versed speaking about present-day immigration. Can you help?” I nod slowly, in disbelief that Geraldine Ferraro is asking me to assist her in a book —any book!—not to mention, it’s about her mother. I float out of her office and, too dazed to hail a cab, I walk the near-mile back to City Hall in my heels. Surely, by the time I arrive there, she’ll have called and said, “Never mind, Regina! I’ve found a bright young scholar to take this on; someone with a sane mother and a normal upbringing!” When Alan meets me at the office door, indeed he says Gerry has called. “Nice work,” he tells me. “Sounds like you made quite an impression.” Instantly the work is a comfort, the familiar feeling of being busy giving me a sense of structure and security.