Mankind’s Cognition Is Distinct
Man is the only creature who is not only capable of thinking but of thinking about his thinking.
Carl Gustav Jung—Swiss psychiatrist; founder of analytical psychology
In the human brain we encounter an emergent mental power, a creative agency that is not found in any other species.
Roger W. Sperry—Nobel Prize–winning neuropsychologist, pioneer in split-brain research
Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.
Noam Chomsky—Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT; father of modern linguistics
Symbolic reasoning is what sets modern humans apart from every other hominid ever known. This is not a difference of degree, but a difference of kind.
Ian Tattersall—Paleoanthropologist, American Museum of Natural History
The human capacity for language, symbolic thought, and culture is not an incremental development—it is a cognitive leap.
Stephen Pinkler—Cognitive Psychologist
The mind of modern humans is not simply an improved version of earlier minds, but a radically different cognitive structure capable of art, music, and religion
Steven Mithen—Archaeologist, University of Reading; author on cognitive archaeology
Only human beings have a language in which they can speak about language. This reflexivity makes us unique.
Karl Popper—Philosopher of science, London School of Economics
Consciousness is what makes the mind more than a mere machine. It is the central fact of specifically human existence
John Searle—Consciousness is what makes the mind more than a mere machine. It is the central fact of specifically human existence.”
(The Mystery of Consciousness)
The gift of mental power comes from God, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth we become in tune with this great power.
Nikola Tesla
Unlike any other creature in the world, man asks not only what things are but what they are for.
Walker Percy—American novelist and philosopher
What is it like to be a bat? … Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. But human beings are unique in reflecting on the very fact that we are conscious.
Thomas Nagel—Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
Mankind’s Conscience Is Distinct
It is the peculiarity of man, in comparison with the other animals, that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust.
Aristotle
Creatures without minds do not know right from wrong; man does. That is why we call him responsible. He is the only creature who can disobey God.
C.S. Lewis—Professor of Literature, Oxford & Cambridge
Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with the moral law. … This inward tribunal in man has no parallel among the brutes. (Metaphysics of Morals)
Immanuel Kant—German Enlightenment philosopher
Man is the only animal who laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
G. K. Chesterton—English writer, philosopher
Brutes are not capable of forming general ideas; much less are they capable of moral rules. Man alone is furnished with that candle of the Lord which shows him right from wrong.
John Locke—English philosopher, “Father of Liberalism”
The Moral Law is not just a cultural artifact but universal and unique to humankind. It sets us apart from all other species and points to a higher source.
Francis Collins—Geneticist; leader of the Human Genome Project; NIH Director
The rational creature alone is capable of law, since it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end. The light of natural reason, by which we discern what is good and evil, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the divine light.
Thomas Aquinas—Italian Dominican theologian, philosopher
No creature except man is capable of a moral sense, for none other can represent in thought the relations of right and wrong.” (The Data of Ethics)
Herbert Spencer—English philosopher, sociologist
Of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important.
Charles Darwin—The Descent of Man
The conscience of man is God’s spy and man’s overseer. It alone holds jurisdiction over man in what he cannot hide.
John Milton
The conscience of man is the measure of the divineness of his own nature. It is that which distinguishes him from the brute creation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Animals act on instinct. Man acts also on conscience. That is why he is morally accountable in a way no other creature is.
Hans Küng—Swiss Catholic theologian and ethicist
The conscience of man is known to be the voice of God. This distinguishes him from all other beings, and by this he is a moral agent
Alexander Hamilton
The beast does what it does; it has no conscience. But man stands before God and knows he must give an account. This is the dignity and the burden of being human.
Søren Kierkegaard—Danish philosopher
Man is the only creature whose very existence is a problem which he has to solve. His freedom involves moral responsibility.
Reinhold Niebuhr—American theologian, ethicist
Man is the only animal that has speech. Speech serves to declare what is advantageous and what is harmful, and so also what is just and what is unjust. It is the peculiarity of man … that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust.
Aristotle
Mankind’s Longing For Meaning Is Distinct
The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information … but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.
Erwin Schrödinger—Nobel Prize–winning physicist, quantum pioneer
The human capacity for rational understanding and the search for truth is itself a reflection of the divine rationality that is the ground of all reality
John Polkinghorne—Theoretical physicist, Cambridge
Man is the only being known to us in the universe who is capable of asking what he is and what the world is.
Hans Jonas—German philosopher, specialist in ethics and biology
Man is the only being who knows that he is mortal. His life is a narrative because he is aware of its beginning and its inevitable end.
Hannah Arendt—Political theorist, The New School for Social Research
Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives
Viktor Frankl—Psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, founder of logotherapy
The human longing for meaning, truth, and beauty cannot be explained by biology alone. It reflects a deeper dimension of our existence.
Alister McGrath—Professor of Science and Religion, Oxford University; theologian
Human beings are animals who can look upon the world and find it intelligible, who can seek after causes, who can ask not only what is but why it is. (The Experience of God)
David Bentley Hart—Eastern Orthodox philosopher and theologian
Man is the only animal that knows he knows.
Teilhard de Chardin—esuit priest, philosopher, and paleontologist
We can know more than we can tell. This tacit power of man surpasses mere biological life, introducing reflection, language, and meaning.
Michael Polanyi—Physical chemist turned philosopher of science
The discovery of the sacred is always the discovery of absolute reality. For man, this is the ultimate and incomparable value. Animals do not ask for meaning; only man does.
Mircea Eliade —Historian of religions, University of Chicago
The human species is the only species that has developed a conscious vision of the future, and we have become the stewards of all life on earth
E. O. Wilson—Biologist, Harvard University; father of sociobiology
The difference between man and the other animals: he is the only one who knows he is lost.
Walker Percy—American novelist and philosopher
Human consciousness is the only place in the natural order where the eternal breaks into the temporal.
Dallas Willard—Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California;