‘If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would. I dunno.’

—Mark Twain, ridiculing Alfred Russel Wallace’s ”anthropocentric’ theory” that the universe was created specifically for the evolution of mankind.