Natural Selection Quotes - Page 8

• Natural selection based on the differential multiplication of variant types cannot exist before there is material capable of replicating itself and its own variations, that is, before the origination of specifically genetic material or gene-material.

  Hermann Joseph Muller

  Science, Differences, Variation

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• The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit.

  Karl Popper

  Struggle, Knowledge, Science

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• We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religion, Atheism, Natural

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• That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.

  Charles Darwin

  Pain, Powerful, Views

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• In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religion, Atheism, Information

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• I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.

  Charles Darwin

  Real, Reading, Expression

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.10473, Delphi Classics

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• Natural selection may lead to benefits for species, but these `higher' advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of natural selection's causal mechanism: differential reproductive success of individuals.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  May, Sides, Benefits

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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• Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of the theory of natural selection. Following their twin announcements of the theory in 1858, both Darwin and Wallace struggled like Laocoöns with the serpentine problem of human evolution and its encoiling difficulty of consciousness. But where Darwin clouded the problem with his own naivete, seeing only continuity in evolution, Wallace could not do so.

  Julian Jaynes

  Twins, Evolution, Problem

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• In however complex a manner this feeling may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.

  Charles Darwin

  Animal, Numbers, Community

  Charles Darwin (1875). “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, p.107

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• Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and to evolution.

  Antoinette Brown Blackwell

  Sex, Differences, Mind

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• In a knowledge economy, natural selection favors organizations that can most effectively harness and coordinate collective intellectual energy and creative capacity.

  Justin Rosenstein

  Organization, Creative, Intellectual

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• The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too.

  Dan Harmon

  Dream, Real, Teeth

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• Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create.

  Lynn Margulis

  Natural, Selection

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• The new advocates of ID [Intelligent Design] ask that their ideas be judged by scientific, not religious, criteria. OK, let's see how well ID stacks up as a scientific alternative to Darwinism. To gauge how well ID is doing as a platform for scientific research, I logged into the best database of the biological literature. A search for keyword ''evolution'' yielded 24,000 hits in the last decade. A search for ''intelligent design'' yielded not a single piece of research. Evolution by natural selection remains the basis of every successful biological research program.

  Chet Raymo

  Religious, Successful, Intelligent

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• You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Imagination, Poetry, Intelligence

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• Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Principles, Guarantees, Changing Environment

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.45, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Eye, Sight

  The Blind Watchmaker ch. 1 (1986) See Paley 3

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• I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Expression, Order

  On the Origin of Species, 5th ed., ch. 3 (1869) See Philander Johnson 1; Herbert Spencer 5; Herbert Spencer 6

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• On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true.

  Charles Darwin

  Past, Looks, World

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.183

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• The right to live does not connote the right of each man to reproduce his kind ... As we lessen the stringency of natural selection, and more and more of the weaklings and the unfit survive, we must increase the standard, mental and physical, of parentage.

  Karl Pearson

  Men, Doe, Kind

  Karl Pearson (1912). “Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics: The Cavendish Lecture, 1912, an Address to the Medical Profession”

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• If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.

  Douglas Adams

  Atheist, Italian, Thinking

  Douglas Adams, Stephen Fry (2012). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.61, Pan Macmillan

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• People are only animals, but special animals. Every animal has fought and killed to survive, even before the dinosaurs. We're the only ones that do it for fun. That's why I don't know about Darwinism. Supposedly evolution and natural selection are all about survival, but we haven't gotten smarter over the years, only more dangerous.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fun, Animal, Years

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• Heavy Metal fans are buying Heavy Metal records, taking the records home, listening to the records and then blowing their heads off with shotguns? Where's the problem? That's an unemployment solution right there, folks! It's called natural selection.

  Denis Leary

  Funny, Home, Humor

  Song: More Drugs, Album: No Cure For Cancer

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• In fact, books are still being published by the lunatic fringe with the same explanation. In case this book should be read by some fundamentalist searching for straws to prop up his prejudices, let me state categorically that all my experience (such as it is) has led me to an unqualified acceptance of evolution by natural selection as a sufficient explanation for what I have seen in the fossil record.

  D. V. Ager

  Book, Acceptance, Science

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• The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore... they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; long unemployment should be a ground for sterilisation.

  Julian Huxley

  Children, Long, Relief

  Julian Huxley (1944). “Man in the Modern World”

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