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Biological Evolution Quotes

Browse 29 quotes about Biological Evolution.

Biological Evolution Quotes

“Evolution is largely a temporal phenomenon, Merrill. The environment changes, and populations in that environment change in turn, or they languish. Individual organisms don't evolve; populations do. Nature doesn't give a damn about individuals. The only role we play in evolution is surviving long enough to give birth to offspring who are slightly different from us. Some of our offspring will prosper in a changing environment, and some of them will not. As for us individuals, once we've reproduced, nature has no more use for us. We perish along with our ill-adapted young. Death has always been an essential factor in species survival. Now consider the human race. We are a partial exception to the rule. Unlike other species, we have developed culture. Instead of adapting to a changing environment biologically, we can sometimes adapt to it culturally. If an Ice Age comes along, we don't need to grow fur on our bodies if we invent the fur coat. Culture allows us to adapt to almost any environment, including the harshest, like space. In fact, our cultural adaptation is so robust that it all but obviates the need to evolve biologically. We are so good at adapting to changing conditions with our knowledge and technology that we may deceive ourselves into believing that we are above nature. But only a fools believes that. Nature always has the last word. A star in our neighborhood could go supernova and wipe out all life in our solar system, and no amount of culture could save us from that. That, I believe, is the main reason you want to seed humanity throughout the galaxy. So as not to have all our eggs in one basket... The chief difference between biological and cultural adaptation is that while biological evolution doesn't care about individuals, cultural evolution does, often at the expense of the species. Look at how many times we've nearly wiped ourselves out through cultural means: the nuclear bomb, pollution, climate change, the Outrage. We can't seem to help ourselves. Look at what we've done: we've made individuals all but immortal, even when it means we can have no more children. In one stroke, we've eliminated the two key ingredients of evolution: offspring and death. From a biological perspective, we're skating on mighty thin ice. ... ...as long as the individual reigns supreme, there's a finite limit to our survival. ... We need a means for the individual, not just the species, to participate in biological evolution, and that's what my project is all about. We need to be able to let our biological bodies die, to have offspring that are molded by the changing needs of the environments we find ourselves in, and yet to serially inhabit these bodies as the same individual. That means we need to be able to move our minds from one body to the next. ... Mine is a singularity in which the obsolete individual is invited to cross over to the new, not simply to die out. The existing person need not die to make room for the newcomer. Anyone can play.”

NatureBiological EvolutionCultural EvolutionTechnological SingularityAis
Book:Mind Over Ship
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“We now know that all extant living creatures derive from a single common ancestor, called the 'Last Universal Common Ancestor' (LUCA). It’s hard to think of a more unifying view of life. All living things are linked to a single-celled creature, the deepest root to the complex-branching tree of life. If we could play the movie of life backward, we would find this microscopic primogenitor at the starting point of biological evolution, the sole actor in what would become a very dramatic story, lasting some 3.5 billion years leading to us.”

Living ThingsTree Of LifeBiological EvolutionLucaSingle CellLast Universal Common AncestorMicroorganism
Book:NOOGENESIS: Computational Biology
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“I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution , where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment... only to vanish forever.”

MomentsLightSeemsIndividualForeverEvolutionWaveComplicatedDelicateFlashOrganismsFringeGleamSparklingBiological EvolutionWave Of Life
Book:The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
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“Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are very unique creatures. As the Dobzhansky said, all animals are unique; humans are the uniquest. And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture for survival, comes from the combination of traditional biological evolution.”

HumansArtSaidCultureLanguageHuman BeingsAnimalEvolutionCreaturesSurvivalUniqueTraditionalCombinationUniquenessBeing HumanDependencyHuman LanguageBiological EvolutionLanguage Arts
Author:Donald Johanson
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“My colleague Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, erroneously suggested that I support the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. That simply is not true. ... Unlike biological evolution, intelligent design is not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school science classes.”

SchoolNationsClassSupportAtheismTeachingDesignTheoryEvolutionRepublicanIntelligentPositive AtheismGenuineAlternativesColleaguesPublic SchoolCurriculumPennsylvaniaIntelligent DesignScientific TheoryBiological EvolutionScience Class
Author:Edward Kennedy
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“The social dynamics of human history, even more than that of biological evolution, illustrate the fundamental principle of ecological evolution - that everything depends on everything else. The nine elements that we have described in societal evolution of the three families of phenotypes - the phyla of things, organizations and people, the genetic bases in knowledge operating through energy and materials to produce phenotypes, and the three bonding relations of threat, integration and exchange - all interact on each other.”

PeopleHumansThreeEnergySocialPrinciplesProduceMaterialsDependsEvolutionElementsOrganizationBasesRelationFundamentalsThreatNineIntegrationHuman HistoryEcologicalDynamicsBondingFundamental PrinciplesBiological Evolution
Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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“It is essential for evolution to become the central core of any educational system, because it is evolution, in the broad sense, that links inorganic nature with life, and the stars with the earth, and matter with mind, and animals with man. Human history is a continuation of biological evolution in a different form.”

MenMindHumansDifferentMatterEarthFormStarsAnimalEvolutionEssentialsEducationalCoreBroadsLinksHuman HistoryEducational SystemContinuationBiological Evolution
Author:Julian Huxley
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“It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.”

WorldHappensValuesIndividualProcessEvolutionPopulationThings HappenEvolveCorporateCorporationsCapabilityUnitsCorporate WorldBiological Evolution
Author:Clayton Christensen
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“The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a Savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsNeedsRealJesusSinChristianityEvolutionDiscoveryOriginalsSalvationHistoricalMythDestroyedBiologySaviorAdamSubmitUnemployedAdam And EveOriginal SinBiological Evolution
Author:Frank Zindler
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“Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.”

KnowsFormReligionLevelsRecordsGroupsDesignMinesEvolutionSpeciesStupidityTrendsAgain And AgainLackingFossilsEquilibriumAdmittingMiningPaleontologyInfuriatingBiological Evolution
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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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.”

Has BeensWholeFactsReligionProcessNaturalAtheismInformationTheoryEvolutionUniversalSelectionNatural SelectionFactualDarwinismIlluminatingBiological Evolution
Author:E. O. Wilson
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“But nature - that is, biological evolution - has not fitted man to any specific environment. On the contrary, ... he has a rather crude survival kit; and yet -this is the paradox of the human condition - one that fits him to all environments. Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.”

MenHumansReasonImaginationAnimalAcceptingEnvironmentConditionsEmotionalEvolutionFitSurvivalContraryParadoxSwimHuman ConditionLockedMultitudesCrudeSubtletyToughnessBiological Evolution
Author:Jacob Bronowski
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“The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. however, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.”

PeopleWorldHumansMatterSpiritualityNextEnergyProcessStepsEventsMaterialsEvolutionInevitableEncountersPrincipalTechnologicalTranscendenceNext StepsSingularityMaterial WorldConnotationBiological EvolutionMatter And Energy
Book:The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
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“We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.”

ThinkingMenYearsReasonProcessAnimalCreationProductsEvolutionBillionsNo ReasonClimaxFortuitousBiological Evolution
Book:Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective
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“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Information distilled over 4 billion years of biological evolution. Incidentally, all the organisms on the Earth are made essentially of that stuff. An eyedropper full of that liquid could be used to make a caterpillar or a petunia if only we knew how to put the components together.”

IfsWayYearsMadeEarthTogetherUsedStuffInformationEvolutionBillionsAtomsOrganismsComponentsLiving ThingsLiquidCaterpillarsPetuniasBiological Evolution
Author:Carl Sagan
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