Home / Quotes / Quote by Theodosius Dobzhansky

Quote by Theodosius Dobzhansky

“No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.”

Quote by Theodosius Dobzhansky

Author

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) was a pioneering Ukrainian-American evolutionary geneticist and one of the founding figures of the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology. His groundbreaking work "Genetics and the Origin of Species" (1937) revolutionized the integration of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution. Through his research on Drosophila fruit flies, Dobzhansky demonstrated the genetic mechanisms underlying speciation and natural selection. His famous assertion that "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" became one of the most influential statements in science. He taught at Columbia University and the University of California, mentoring generations of geneticists and profoundly shaping 20th-century biology. more

You May Also Like

“Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.”

Whole Science Nature Natural Evolution Details Operations Smallest Consonants

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.”

Science Water Animal Mankind Evolution Pleasant Swim Swimming Imperfect Ancestor Tails Skulls Genealogy Bladder Hermaphrodites

Book:Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution

Source: Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution

“Physio-philosophy has to show how, and in accordance indeed with what laws, the Material took its origin; and, therefore, how something derived its existence from nothing. It has to portray the first periods of the world's development from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms, they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in Man attained self-consciousness.”

“Primates stand at a turning point in the course of evolution. Primates are to the biologist what viruses are to the biochemist. They can be analysed and partly understood according to the rules of a simpler discipline, but they also present another level of complexity: viruses are living chemicals, and primates are animals who love and hate and think.”

Thinking Science Hate Courses Animal Levels Evolution Discipline Understood Complexity Chemicals Viruses Turning Points Love And Hate Biologist Primates

Author:Alison Jolly

“Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.”

Reason Might Science Process Car Evolution Elements Train Destination Resolve Departure

Book:Under the Apple-Trees

Source: Under the Apple-Trees

“Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.”

Different Ends Might Science Taken Seeing Groups Evolution Diversity Bird Originals Structure Species Related Fancy

Book:On the Origin of Species

Source: On the Origin of Species

“Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee much later than others.”

Seems Science Evolution Folks Chimpanzees

Author:Kin Hubbard

“Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.”

Needs Mind Reason Science Strong Grows Loses Perfect Evolution Survival Weak Majority Species Acquire Again And Again

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.”

Art Science Order Nature Class Evolution Circumstances Species Variety Nature And Art

Author:Carl Linnaeus

“The central problem of biological evolution is the nature of mutation, but hitherto the occurrence of this has been wholly refractory and impossible to influence by artificial means, although a control of it might obviously place the process of evolution in our hands.”

Mean Has Beens Problem Hands Might Science Process Impossible Influence Evolution Biology Artificial Mutation Biological Evolution

Author:Hermann Joseph Muller