Natural Selection Quotes - Page 5

• Proponents of intelligent design don't accept that some of the very complex nanomachines that we have inside ourselves could have come about solely on the basis of natural selection.

  Francis Collins

  Intelligent, Design, Natural

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• Natural selection deals ruthlessly with any population, bird or beaver, which fails to solve the problems of its environment with all those resources, learned or unlearned, which may be at its disposal.

  Robert Ardrey

  Bird, Population, May

  ROBERT ARDREY (1966). “THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE”

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• What could not be denied was that in vast segments of the animal world natural selection of the most qualified individuals took place not by competition for females but by competition for space.

  Robert Ardrey

  Animal, Space, Competition

  ROBERT ARDREY (1961). “AFRICAN GENISIS”

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• One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don't. You have compassion, you try and help people. It's a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything.

  Bill Nighy

  Compassion, Two, People

  Interview with Sarah Crompton, www.telegraph.co.uk. June 10, 2014.

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• anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently.

  Ernst Mayr

  Writing, Society, Common

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• As a means of variation from a normal type, sickness in childhood ought to have a certain value not to be classed under any fitness or unfitness of natural selection; and especially scarlet fever affected boys seriously, both physically and in character, though they might through life puzzle themselves to decide whether it had fitted or unfitted them for success.

  Henry Adams

  Character, Mean, Boys

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.10, Booklassic

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• Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Design, Example

  "The Panda's Thumb". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Double Trouble", pp. 38-40, 1980.

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• Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower" animals with simple nervous systems arise as genetic products of natural selection, then human behavior should have a similar basis.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Animal, Simple, Views

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Our Natural Place", p. 243, 1983.

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• Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Yield, Simplicity, Might

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.355, Harvard University Press

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• Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives.

  Richard Dawkins

  Dna, Archives, Rivals

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.124, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.

  Charles Darwin

  Perfection, Progress, Natural

  Charles Darwin (1875). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.428

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• It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover, from observations science has made, that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection, and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on.

  Michael Behe

  Fundamentals, Goes On, Natural

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• Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works.

  David M. Raup

  Thinking, Mountain, Doe

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• Another way to test hypotheses about adaptation is to consider trait variation across a group of species instead of focusing on the trait of a single species. Rather than seeking to explain why polar bears have fur of a certain thickness, one tries to explain why bears in colder climates have thicker fur than bears in warmer climates. The former problem is hard to solve, since it is hard to say exactly what fur thickness polar bears should have if natural selection guided the evolution of that trait.

  Elliott Sober

  Should Have, Trying, Tests

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much.

  Charles Darwin

  Dad, Men, Doctors

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• People will say, "You're never going to convince me that something as complicated as an eye could come about by sheer chance." And the answer is that natural selection is the very opposite of sheer chance. Natural selection is a non-random process.

  Richard Dawkins

  Eye, Opposites, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• All the shy people are doomed! Natural selection favors the loud and the aggressive

  Dylan Moran

  People, Shy, Favors

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• If... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced.' Thus, 'the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.

  Robert Trivers

  Strong, Communication, Animal

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• With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes.

  Charles Darwin

  Progress, Degrees, Savages

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Descent of Man (Diversion Classics)”, p.199, Diversion Books

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• Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose.

  Henry Gee

  Memories, Purpose, Variation

  Henry Gee (1999). “In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life”, p.96, Cornell University Press

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• Genetic algorithms (GAs) are defined as search procedures based on the mechanics of natural selection and genetics, and we think we know what innovation is - at least in some sort of qualitative way - but what does one have to do with the other?

  David Edward

  Thinking, Innovation, Way

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• Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time.

  Steven Pinker

  Design, Evolution, Natural

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.158, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Views, Data, Fancy

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• The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

  H. G. Wells

  Passion, Artist, Men

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• There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life, for example, there was never sufficient natural selection pressure to develop better eyes, individuals could earn other things like smiley smiles rather than waste energy & time on better eyes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Eye, Energy, Example

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