Evolution Quotes - Page 12

• Evolution on the large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.

  Edmund Beecher Wilson

  Science, History, Dynasty

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• However, if we consider that all the characteristics which have been cited are only differences in degree of structure, may we not suppose that this special condition of organization of man has been gradually acquired at the close of a long period of time, with the aid of circumstances which have proved favorable? What a subject for reflection for those who have the courage to enter into it!

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Reflection, Men

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• I am above the forest region, amongst grand rocks & such a torrent as you see in Salvator Rosa's paintings vegetation all a scrub of rhodods. with Pines below me as thick & bad to get through as our Fuegian Fagi on the hill tops, & except the towering peaks of P. S. that, here shoot up on all hands there is little difference in the mt scenery—here however the blaze of Rhod. flowers and various colored jungle proclaims a differently constituted region in a naturalists eye & twenty species here, to one there, always are asking me the vexed question, where do we come from?

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Flower, Eye, Rocks

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• I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Book, Thinking

  Joseph Dalton Hooker, Leonard Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M., G.C.S.I.”, p.511, Cambridge University Press

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• I have watched all the work going on there, and the more I see of it the more I am convinced that Mendelism has nothing to do with evolution.

  Ernest MacBride

  Science, Convinced

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• It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.

  Gardner Murphy

  Science, Men, Pigs

  Gardner Murphy (1947). “Personality”

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• It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called "educated classes" are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Ignorance, Science, Men

  Ernst Haeckel (1883). “The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny”

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• Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Mean, Responsibility, Science

  George Gaylord Simpson (1967). “The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man”, p.311, Yale University Press

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• Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. ... Everything science has taught me-and continues to teach me-strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.

  Wernher von Braun

  Inspirational, Death, Spiritual

  Wernher Von Braun (2007). “The Voice of Dr. Wernher Von Braun: An Anthology”, Collectors Guide Pub

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• Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.

  Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

  Nature, Blessed, Science

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• Of these three essential factors, space might be said to be one with which biogeography is primarily concerned. However space necessarily interplays with time and form, therefore the three factors are as one of biogeographic concern.

  Leon Croizat

  Science, Space, Essentials

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• On consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end.

  David Lack

  Character, Science, Differences

  David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.54, CUP Archive

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• One must believe that every living thing whatsoever must change insensibly in its organization and in its form... One must therefore never expect to find among living species all those which are found in the fossil state, and yet one may not assume that any species has really been lost or rendered extinct.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Believe, Science, Organization

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• All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Sex, Loss, Science

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• The chemical differences among various species and genera of animals and plants are certainly as significant for the history of their origins as the differences in form. If we could define clearly the differences in molecular constitution and functions of different kinds of organisms, there would be possible a more illuminating and deeper understanding of question of the evolutionary reactions of organisms than could ever be expected from morphological considerations.

  Ray Lankester

  Science, Animal, Differences

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• The decisive step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations.

  Richard Goldschmidt

  Science, Firsts, Steps

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• The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Men, Organization

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• The History of Evolution is the real source of light in the investigation of organic bodies. It is applicable at every step, and all our ideas of the correlation of organic bodies will be swayed by our knowledge of the history of evolution. To carry the proof of it into all branches of research would be an almost endless task. (1828)

  Karl Ernst von Baer

  Real, Science, Light

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• The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Science, Law, Iron

  KENNETH E. BOULDING (1953). “THE ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION”

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• The Silurian Period-the grandest of all the Periods,-and, as yet, apparently the seed-time of all succeeding life.

  John Jeremiah Bigsby

  Life, Science, Succeed

  John Jeremiah Bigsby (1868). “Thesauricus Siluricus: The flora and fauna of the Silurian period. With addenda (from recent acquisitions).”, p.1

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• We do not draw conclusions with our eyes, but with our reasoning powers, and if the whole of the rest of living nature proclaims with one accord from all sides the evolution of the world of organisms, we cannot assume that the process stopped short of Man. But it follows also that the factors which brought about the development of Man from his Simian ancestry must be the same as those which have brought about the whole of evolution.

  August Weismann

  Nature, Eye, Science

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• We have long been seeking a different kind of evolutionary process and have now found one; namely, the change within the pattern of the chromosomes. ... The neo-Darwinian theory of the geneticists is no longer tenable.

  Richard Goldschmidt

  Science, Long, Different

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• ... on these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world.

  Henry Walter Bates

  Nature, Writing, Butterfly

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• In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.

  Bruce Alberts

  Intelligent, Design, Gaps

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• Although God believers don't need evolution to be false, atheists need evolution to be true.

  Ann Coulter

  Atheist, Needs, Being True

  Ann Coulter (2006). “Godless: The Church of Liberalism”, p.199, Crown Forum

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