Best evolution & biologist Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.”

Source: Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History

“I am of course getting angry if biologists try to use the general concept 'chance' in order to explain phenomena which are so typical for living organisms as, for instance, those appearing in the biological evolution.”

Ifs Trying Use Order Courses Chance Evolution Concepts Angry Instance Organisms Typical Appearing Biologist Living Organisms Biological Evolution

Author:Wolfgang Paul

“A high place of honor, although doubtless one to be obtained only after enduring the pangs of a prolonged crucifixion, awaits that philosophical biologist, or that philosopher sufficiently acquainted with scientific biology, who subjects the modern doctrine of evolution to a thoroughly critical analysis, with a view to detect and to estimate its metaphysical assumptions.”

Views Modern Subjects Evolution Honor Philosophical Endure Philosopher Critical Doctrine Analysis Assumption Biology Metaphysical Crucifixion Biologist High Places Critical Analysis

Author:George Trumbull Ladd

“Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle.”

“As an evolutionary biologist, I have learned over the years that most people do not want to see themselves as lumbering robots programmed to ensure the survival of their genes. I don't think they will want to see themselves as digital computers either. To be told by someone with impeccable scientific credentials that they are nothing of the kind can only be pleasing.”

People Thinking Want Years Kind Evolution Computer Survival Digital Genes I Have Learned Robots Biologist Impeccable Credentials

Author:John Maynard Smith

“Dawkins asserts that final causes and design don't really exist. Unguided evolution explains it all. Francis Crick thought the same thing but was afraid people would be misled by what they actually saw. So he issued this warning: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What? A warning to ignore the obvious? Absolutely. Because if we don't ignore the obvious, we might be tempted to follow common sense and attribute the "appearance" of design to actual design.”

People Ifs Mind Might Would Be Causes Common Saws Design Evolution Finals Obvious Appearance Common Sense Warning Attributes Tempted Biologist Misled

Author:Frank Turek

“The business of proving evolution has reached a stage when it is futile for biologists to work merely to discover more and more evidence of evolution. Those who choose to believe that God created every biological species separately in the state we observe them, but made them in a way calculated to lead us to the conclusion that they are the products of an evolutionary development are obviously not open to argument. All that can be said is that their belief is an implicit blasphemy, for it imputes to God an appalling deviousness.”

Way Believe Made Said States Belief Stage Products Development Evolution Prove Evidence Argument Species Conclusion Blasphemy Biologist Implicit Deviousness

Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky

“Evolution has long been badly taught. In particular, students - and even professional biologists - acquire theories of evolution without any deep understanding of what problem these theories attempt to solve. They learn but little of the evolution of evolutionary theory.”

Littles Long Problem Understanding Students Taught Particular Theory Evolution Solve Acquire Biologist Theory Of Evolution Deep Understanding

Book:Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

“It gives evolutionary biologists great status if they champion competition and the economists have to consult them. The economists have to consult the evolutionary biologists, because they are the ones who invented the idea of competition. It comes from the field of evolution.”

Ifs Giving Ideas Fields Evolution Competition Champion Economist Biologist

Author:Greg Graffin

“Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.”

Reason Problem Natural Environment Evolution Consequence Property Adaptation Natural Selection Biologist

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.”

Firsts Looks May Real Matter Evolution Prove Research Function Dues Accidents Odd Outcomes Phenomenon Irrelevant Biologist

Author:E. O. Wilson

“As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.”

Ifs Knows World Problem Universe Process Natural Design Produce Evolution Promise Creating Capable Infinite Complexes Critics Notion Definitions Creator Biologist

Author:Sam Harris

“Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.”

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

“... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation prevails: biologists have documented a veritable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurable evolution on timescales of years and decades.”

Knows Years Facts Situation Cases Evolution Opposites Folks Decades Rapids Here And Now Biologist

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Mind Science Evolution Biologist Origin Of Life Creation And Evolution

Book:What Mad Pursuit

Source: What Mad Pursuit

“I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred.”

Different Would Be Science Natural Views Evolution Convinced Selection Genetics Natural Selection Biologist

Author:John B. S. Haldane

“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

“I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.”

“Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.”

Belief Left Accepting Generations Modern Special Creation Evolution Satisfaction Alternatives Spontaneous Hypothesis Unwilling Downfall Biologist Be Spontaneous Creation And Evolution

Author:George Wald

“Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation.”

Knows Has Beens Stories Able Black Know How Theory Evolution Complexes Boxes Treated Explanation Biologist Black Boxes

Book:Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds

Source: Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds

“In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity [i.e evolutionism] has always necessitated on retreat from pure empiricism [i.e., logic an observation], and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists [i.e creationist], not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have struck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach... It was Darwin the evolutionist who was retreating from the facts.”

Real Facts Today Community Evolution Pure Approach Logic Contrary Doctrine Observation Retreat Continuity Advocacy Biologist Empiricism Creationist

Author:Michael Denton

“I have been a biologist for a long time, and I hope I never stop getting shivers in my spine when I think about the beauty of how we come to know things in biology. Biologists make predictions, then they go out into the field or the lab to see if their predictions hold up. When hundreds of predictions of this sort are fulfilled, a theory reaches the point where it becomes certain, at least on a broad level. And that is where we are with evolution.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Long Has Beens Certain Levels Fields Theory Evolution Long Time Biology Broads Fulfilled Predictions Spine Labs Biologist Shiver

Author:Darrel R. Falk

“It is my conviction that if any professional biologist will take adequate time to examine carefully the assumptions upon which the macro-evolution doctrine rests, and the observational and laboratory evidence that bears on the problem of origins, he/she will conclude that there are substantial reasons for doubting the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, I believe that a scientifically sound creationist view of origins is not only possible, but it is to be preferred over the evolutionary one.”

Ifs Believe Reason Problem I Believe Sound Views Doubt Bears Evolution Evidence Conviction Doctrine Assumption Adequate Laboratory Biologist Macro Creationist

Author:Dean H. Kenyon

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