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Quote by Randolph M. Nesse

“I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove.”

Quote by Randolph M. Nesse

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Randolph M. Nesse
Randolph M. Nesse

Randolph M. Nesse is a renowned American author born in 1948. His works primarily focus on biology, evolution, and human behavior, having a profound impact on the scientific community. more

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“If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?”

“Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. If I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant.”

“You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.”