Natural Selection Quotes - Page 5

• But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

  Terry Pratchett

  Eagles, One Day, Doe

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Small Gods: (Discworld Novel 13)”, p.10, Random House

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• Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared.

  Ted Rall

  War, Home, Average

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• Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Wish, Looks

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• We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution.

  Pierre-Paul Grasse

  Lying, Men, Doubt

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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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• In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, Survival, Quality

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Natural selection does not give any preference at all to anything that, in the long run, could be advantageous for the species but blindly rewards everything that, momentarily, affords greater procreative success.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Running, Long, Giving

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• We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. And we should be proud that we are the only species that has figured how we came to be.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Law, Brain, Proud

  Jerry A. Coyne (2009). “Why Evolution Is True”, p.233, Penguin

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• Quantitative work shows clearly that natural selection is a reality, and that, among other things, it selects Mendelian genes, which are known to be distributed at random through wild populations, and to follow the laws of chance in their distribution to offspring. In other words, they are an agency producing variation of the kind which Darwin postulated as the raw material on which selection acts.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Reality, Agency, Law

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• It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.

  Thomas Nagel

  Together, Example, Alternatives

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• It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.

  Thomas Nagel

  Together, Natural, Results

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”, p.12, Oxford University Press

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• And yet, strange to say, now that this truth is recognized by most cultivated people — now that the beneficent working of the survival of the fittest has been so impressed on them that, much more than people in past times, they might be expected to hesitate before neutralizing its action — now more than ever before in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further survival of the unfittest!

  Herbert Spencer

  People, Survival, World

  "The Man versus the State: Great Essays".

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• Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

  Richard Leakey

  Long, Goal, Firsts

  "The Origin of Humankind". Book by Richard Leakey, 1994.

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• One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.

  Francis Galton

  Law, Land, Civilization

  "Hereditary Talent and Character". MacMillan's Magazine, 12, 1865.

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• Natural selection must be replaced by eugenical artificial selection. This idea constitutes the sound core of eugenics, the applied science of human betterment.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Ideas, Eugenics, Sound

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• That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.

  Robert J. Sawyer

  Facts, Natural, Type

  Robert J. Sawyer (2009). “Calculating God”, p.102, Macmillan

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• Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.

  Chauncey Wright

  Life, Moving, Stones

  Chauncey Wright (2003). “Philosphical Discussions”, p.108, A&C Black

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• The [peppered-moth] experiments show the effects of predation on the survival of the dark and of the normal forms of the Peppered Moth in a clean environment and in one polluted by smoke. The experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection--or survival of the fittest--in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the population may alter in their content of light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston Betularia.

  L. Harrison Matthews

  Dark, Light, Survival

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• Ultimately, of course, you must decide for yourself whether the subjective psychological effects created by your evolved cognitive biases reflect an objective reality, perhaps as evidence that God designed your mind to be so receptive to Him. Or, just maybe, you will come to acknowledge that, like the rest of us, you are a hopeless pawn in one of natural selection's most successful hoaxes ever-and smile at the sheer ingenuity involved in pulling it off, at the very thought of such mindless cleverness. One can still enjoy the illusion of God, after all, without believing Him to be real.

  Jesse Bering

  Real, Believe, Successful

  Jesse Bering (2013). “The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life”, p.16, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

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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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• The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.

  Eugene Wigner

  Believe, Perfection, Miracle

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• Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger - even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all - and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Worry, Suffering, Nihilism

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.392, Simon and Schuster

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• Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.

  Richard Leakey

  Nature, Culture, World

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• The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."

  Daniel Dennett

  Thinking, Views, Ideas

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA", www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes; our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.

  Daniel Dennett

  Mind, Culture, Biology

  "Daniel Dennett: 'I don't like theory of mind'". Interview with Carole Jahme, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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