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Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes

“[T]ruly grand and powerful theories [...] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information. The failure of a particular claim usually records a local error, not the bankruptcy of a central theory. [...] If I mistakenly identify your father's brother as your own dad, you don't become genealogically rootless and created de novo. You still have a father; we just haven't located him properly.”

“It turns out that information leaks between universes at the quantum level. We think it accounts for all kinds of phenomena, from what drives evolution to strange insights and mystical experiences through the ages. The machine was built as an attempt to investigate and amplify them.”

“All that's known is this: there is no central processor, no single computer. Nothing that simple. Millions of neurons process information simultaneously and in parallel, not linearly, but the actual chemistry and electrical properties of that integrative process are still being mapped. Even so, it seems odd that during the evolution of brain circuitry and thinking, the ability to understand itself did not get wired in. Such built-in innocence seems like a terrible oversight.”

“As we blossom or awaken, we begin to notice there is a force in the world that seems to be operating and leading us into a certain destiny. And it's very much a kind of detective effort on our own part to figure out what these things mean. The synchronicity is essentially a meaningful coincidence that brings us information at just the right time. While leading us forward, it also feels very inspiring and destined in a way. It feels like we're on a path of unfolding in our own personal evolution.”

“Technology is a liberation. I think the information age probably is the best thing to happen to the human race in human evolution. Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind.”

“Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order....I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Evolution works through indirection: each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.”

“I believe in the not-too-distant future, people are going to learn to trust their information to the Net more than they now do, and be able to essentially manage very large amounts and perhaps their whole lifetime of information in the Net with the notion that they can access it securely and privately for as long as they want, and that it will persist over all the evolution and technical changes.”

“The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again.”

“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.”

“Darwin was one of our finest specimens. He did superbly what human beings are designed to do: manipulate social information to personal advantage. The information in question was the prevailing account of how human beings, and all organisms, came to exist; Darwin reshaped it in a way that radically raised his social status. When he died in 1882, his greatness was acclaimed in newspapers around the world, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, not far from the body of Isaac Newton. Alpha-male territory.”

“Seen in retrospect, evolution as a whole doubtless had a general direction, from simple to complex, from dependence on to relative independence of the environment, to greater and greater autonomy of individuals, greater and greater development of sense organs and nervous systems conveying and processing information about the state of the organism's surroundings, and finally greater and greater consciousness. You can call this direction progress or by some other name.”

“I shall discuss the broad patterns of hominoid evolution, an exercise made enjoyable by the need to integrate diverse kinds of information, and use that as a vehicle to speculate about hominoid origins, an event for which there is no recognized fossil record. Hence, an opportunity to exercise some imagination.”