Science Quote by Loren Eiseley

Eiseley aims his scalpel at a very modern failure mode: the moment curiosity calcifies into confidence. “God knows” is doing double duty. From a scientist, it’s a sly admission of epistemic humility, but also a rhetorical jab at anyone who thinks they’ve graduated from surprise. He opens with a shrug toward the unknowable, then pivots to a diagnosis of the know-it-all.

The key villain is “smug,” a word that indicts not ignorance but satisfaction. Smugness isn’t simply being wrong; it’s the self-sealing belief that you don’t need to look anymore. In Eiseley’s world - shaped by fossils, deep time, and the sheer contingency of evolution - the most dangerous assumption is that reality will politely unfold without your attention. “Assuming that matters will take their own course” sounds like common sense until you hear its implied cost: you stop intervening, stop noticing, stop asking, and life’s essential signals pass by unregistered.

The subtext is ethical as much as intellectual. Eiseley suggests that missing “things” isn’t just missing facts; it’s missing chances to act, to love, to correct course, to recognize patterns before they harden into consequences. Coming from a scientist who wrote with the sensibility of a poet, the warning lands as cultural critique: progress, relationships, even truth don’t “take their own course” unless someone is awake enough to track them. Smugness isn’t a personality quirk here; it’s a way of abandoning the world while pretending you understand it.