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Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes

“The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright.”

Source: I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History

“Although humans have existed on this planet for perhaps 2 million years, the rapid climb to modern civilization within the last 200 years was possible due to the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge is exponential; that is, its rate of expansion is proportional to how much is already known. The more we know, the faster we can know more. For example, we have amassed more knowledge since World War II than all the knowledge amassed in our 2-million-year evolution on this planet. In fact, the amount of knowledge that our scientists gain doubles approximately every 10 to 20 years.”

“Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion.”

Process Evolution Constant Expansion

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“What's popularly known as the evolution of consciousness, in other words that the expansion of cognitive repertoire that occurs in human beings, which has always been a great puzzle to evolutionary theory, I believe, occurred in the presence of a kind of catalyst for the human imagination.”

Believe Humans Kind I Believe Imagination Human Beings Consciousness Known Theory Evolution Expansion Puzzles Catalyst Cognitive Human Imagination

Author:Terence McKenna

“One way to think about what psychedelics are is as catalysts for language development. They literally force the evolution of language. You cannot evolve faster than your language because the language defines the culture of meaning. So if there's a way to accelerate the evolution of language then this is real consciousness expansion and it's a permanent thing. The great legacies of the 60's are in attitudes and language. It boils down to doing your own thing, feeling the vibe, ego-trip, blowing your mind.”

“What is happening, I think, it's really bigger than psychedelics, it's bigger than human evolution. We are not making the waves in this ocean. We are corks, riding the waves of the ocean. But we are privileged, by perhaps chance alone, to occupy a unique moment in the history of the universe. A moment when the universe goes through some kind of self-transforming, evolutionary, inflationary expansion. That's what's happening.”

Thinking Humans Kind Self Moments Universe Chance Evolution Ocean Unique Happenings Bigger Wave Riding Expansion Privileged Transforming Human Evolution Cork

Author:Terence McKenna

“Life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense-only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be simple.”

Life Shows Simple Evolution Diversity Starting Complexity Trends Usual Expansion Starting Point

Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history