Evolution Quotes - Page 15

• In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark.

  Arthur Koestler

  Creating, Brain, Mark

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• Evolution goes beyond what went before, but because it must embrace what went before, then its very nature is to transcend and include and thus it has an inherent directionality, a secret impulse, toward increasing depth, increasing intrinsic value, increasing consciousness. In order for evolution to move at all, it must move in those directions-there's no place else for it to go!

  Ken Wilber

  Moving, Order, Secret

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• We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.

  Carl Sagan

  Taken, Hands, Firsts

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.47, Ballantine Books

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• The proof given by Wright, that non-adaptive differentiation will occur in small populations owing to "drift," or the chance fixation of some new mutation or recombination, is one of the most important results of mathematical analysis applied to the facts of neo-mendelism. It gives accident as well as adaptation a place in evolution, and at one stroke explains many facts which puzzled earlier selectionists, notably the much greater degree of divergence shown by island than mainland forms, by forms in isolated lakes than in continuous river-systems.

  Julian Huxley

  Science, Rivers, Lakes

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• There are a lot of very brilliant scholars who believe the reason we have incomplete science on evolution is that there is a higher power involved in this.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Believe, Religion, Atheism

  "Discovery Phase" by Chris Mooney, prospect.org. January 31, 2005.

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• I did not know from a scientific perspective why I did not believe in evolution - but I knew from a Biblical perspective it had to be wrong or my faith was in trouble.

  Ken Ham

  Believe, Biblical, Perspective

  Ken Ham (2012). “Lie: Evolution, The (25th Anniversary Edition): The Lie: Evolution/Millions of Years”, p.18, New Leaf Publishing Group

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• You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Believe, Religion

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• Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ignorance, Simple, Religion

  "Should Religion Impact Your Vote?" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 7, 2011.

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• [Creationists have] lost in the courts of law; they've long ago lost in the halls of science; and they continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. Taking offense is all they've got left.

  Richard Dawkins

  Long Ago, Law, Support

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• The concept of God is generated by a brain designed by evolution to find design in nature (a very recursive idea).

  Michael Shermer

  Ideas, Design, Brain

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• Evolution ... is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.

  Ernst Mayr

  Religion, Atheism, Unpredictable

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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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• On the whole, at least in the author's experience, the preparation of species-specific antiserum fractions and the differentiation of closely related species with precipitin sera for serum proteins does not succeed so regularly as with agglutinins and lysins for blood cells. This may be due to the fact that in the evolutional scale the proteins undergo continuous variations whereas cell antigens are subject to sudden changes not linked by intermediary stages.

  Karl Landsteiner

  Science, Cells, Blood

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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 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 myriad valleys could have arisen anywhere on the landscape. The current positions are quite accidental. If we could repeat the experiment, we might obtain no valleys at all, or a completely different system. Yet we now stand at the shore line contemplating the fine spacing of valleys and their even contact with the sea. How easy it is to be misled and to assume that no other landscape could possibly have arisen.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Sea, Different, Valleys

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• History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, History, Causes

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• Our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud, by teaching evolution as fact.

  Tom DeLay

  Children, Teaching, School

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• ... each with its own beauty, and each with a story to tell.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Beauty, Stories

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.12, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Forelimbs of people, porpoises, bats and horses provide the classic example of homology in most textbooks. They look different, and do different things, but are built of the same bones. No engineer, starting from scratch each time, would have built such disparate structures from the same parts.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Horse, Time, People

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• In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Struggle, Two, Usual

  Stephen Jay Gould (1991). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Orchids, Made, Jury

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.20, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without us.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  World, Fit, Made

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.206, W. W. Norton & Company

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• For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Battle, Body, Genes

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.89, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Views, Adaptation, Reason

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