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Lyall Watson Quotes

South African - Scientist | April 12, 1939 - June 25, 2008

Air is traditionally 'thin,' but the more we learn about our atmosphere, the more substantial it becomes. In some places it is so filled with inorganic flotsam that it is almost thick enough to plough; in others, it has become so primed with the by-products of life that it comes close to being a living tissue in its own right.

Life Learn Enough Living Become Air

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

Simple Brain Understand Would Could

Even in the lives of fishes, sensation is seldom a matter of one thing or another. Senses overlap. The lines between them often tend to be blurred, and the best that we can manage, by way of description from the outside, is to say that the senses of fishes appear to dominate one at a time.

Time Best Say Way Matter Outside

Even the cleanest air, at the centre of the South Pacific or somewhere over Antarctica, has two hundred thousand assorted bits and pieces in every lungful. And this count rises to two million or more in the thick of the Serengeti migration, or over a six-lane highway during rush hour in downtown Los Angeles.

Los Angeles More Two Over Air Count

I live and work alone and travel light, relying largely on my memory and making a point of letting intuition guide my way.

Work Live Alone Light Travel Memory

All I do is look, listen and try to make sense of what I find, in biological terms.

Look Find Try Listen Sense Make

Smell was our first sense. It is even possible that being able to smell was the stimulus that took a primitive fish and turned a small lump of olfactory tissue on its nerve cord into a brain. We think because we smelled.

Brain Small Think Fish Possible

Before sight and sound hijacked our attention, we shared with all life a sort of common sense, a chemical sense that depended on direct contact with matter in the water or the air.

Life Water Common Sense Attention

Smell is a long-distance sense, a way of stretching time and finding out in advance what lies ahead.

Time Finding Ahead Way Smell Out

Smell is stimulating. It stirs things up and makes us nostalgic - a wonderful word which literally means 'ache for home' - which serves to inspire new circuits in the brain.

Home Brain Inspire New Smell Up

The limits of sensory evolution in fish are defined very largely by their habitat. Water is physically supportive, carries some kinds of odour well, and is kind to sound - letting it travel several times faster than air will allow, but it inhibits other more personal kinds of communication.

Communication Water Travel Limits

Breathing air is a liberating experience. It freed our ancestors from the constraints of staying wet or having to remain within easy reach of water for refuge, respiration or reproduction. But the biggest change it made in our lives was to expose us to a whole new range of sensory experience.

Change Water Experience Reach Easy

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