Certain lessons....................

     That knowledge will expand we can be certain, and at an accelerating pace and in directions we cannot possible predict.  This book is written from the viewpoint of a historian, and while all theories of history are vainglorious absurdities, doomed to eventual oblivion, history does teach certain lessons, one of which is that science, like everything else, becomes out of date.  And another is that nature is full of surprises.
-Paul Johnson,  Darwin:  Portrait of a Genius