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E Quotes

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“Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.”

“Evolution is the long blur, a constant and living flow of branching relationships. One thing is always connected to another and another. Having no regard for our love of labels and organization, life rolls on as a continual stream of organic matter. The important thing about the origin of the human brain is not pinpointing some specific time, event, or fossil to declare a beginning in order to satisfy our desire for order. What matters is that we understand the process from which it emerged and how deeply rooted the modern human brain is to its past.”

“Evolution is the only thing that exists through time. That is true for computers, or people, or a business. We tend to see things in a static way, and so you see what is. Even in looking at ourselves, what we really are is essentially vessels for our DNA that keeps evolving through time. So seeing that and embracing that reality, and thinking of everything as kind of this perpetual motion machine in which you embrace reality - you don't wish it was different. You realize that it's your puzzle to interact with. You interact with it well, you evolve yourself.”

“Evolution is variation and selection. If you can vary alternatives, and select among them, improvement emerges. It works in technology, in apps, and in life itself. What stunned me about seasteading is that it's a technology for variation and selection in governance itself. The reason some two hundred nation-states do a poor job of governing seven billion people is that they don't vary, and people don't select.”

“Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it.”

“Evolution lies at the heart of biology. It is seamlessly and continuously linked to health research to better understand such conditions as AIDS or bird flu or Parkinson's or cancer or heart disease. Every biomedical experiment, every tiny advance, every major breakthrough ultimately connects to the principles first postulated by Darwin.”

“Evolution occurs in the world of time and space and form, whereas Spirit's primordial nature is finally timeless and Formless, prior to the of evolution but not other to it. We do not find Spirit or Emptiness by reaching some evolutionary Omega point in time, but rather by stepping off the cycle of time and evolution altogether (or ceasing to contract into it).”

“Evolution of mind was altogether another matter and belonged to another science, but whether one traced descent from the shark or the wolf was immaterial even in morals. This matter had been discussed for ages without scientific result. La Fontaine and other fabulists maintained that the wolf, even in morals, stood higher than man; and in view of the late civil war, Adams had doubts of his own on the facts of moral evolution:”

“Evolution,' proclaimed the Rev. Daniel Miner Gordon during his inaugural lecture at Presbyterian College in Halifax, 'with its concept of growth rather than mechanism, of life working from within rather than a power constructing from without, helps further illustrate the method of Him who is the life of all that lives.' Seen in this way, evolution gave evidence of God's existence and watchful Providence; it revealed that the Creator was omniscient and omnipresent. Christian evolution implied a God of immanence, a God who dwelled within and constantly guided the natural world. This contrasted sharply with the orthodox view of a transcendent God who ruled the world from afar and touched it only by the occasional intervention in nature or history - a miracle. It now seemed that God was within nature and history, and close to humankind. Moreover, God the harsh judge had been banished by scientific understanding. It was understood that God was an active benevolent spirit. Some of the mystery had been lifted. Evolution had cast new light upon nature, the destiny of humanity, and the ways of God. It seemed to have provided a more inspiring and certain Christian world-view. Ironically, the clergy could base their arguments regarding the existence and nature of God on science, the source of so much doubt regarding the truth of Christianity.”

“Evolution tells us how to survive; art tells us how it's possible still to live even while knowing that we and all we love will someday vanish. It says there's beauty even in grief, freedom even inside the strictures of form and of life. What's liberating isn't what's simplest; it's the ability to include more and more shadows, colors and possibilities inside any moment's meeting of self and world.”

“Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.”