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Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes

“In its evolution from a more primitive nervous system, the brain, as an organ with ten or more billion neurons and many more connections between them must have changed and grown as a result of many accidents.”

Results Brain Changed Evolution Ten Connections Accidents Billions Nervous Organs Primitive Nervous System Neurons

Author:Stanislaw Ulam

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”

Source: On the Origin of Species

“Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.”

Bigs Certain Evolution Combination Unhappiness Disorder Organs Committees Recipes Glands God Is Not Great Adrenal Glands

Book:Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume

Source: Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume

“As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor] sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene expression.”

May Science Growth Expression Source Evolution Males Factors Instance Nerves Genes Organs Bizarre Snakes Venom

Author:Rita Levi-Montalcini

“Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.”

Science Space Animal Vision Five Stage Products Evolution Survival Hearing Flight Organs Cents Efficiency Smooth Reproduction Believable Trajectory

Book:The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

Source: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

“It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species. Novelties come from previously unseen association of old material. To create is to recombine.”

Giving Science Natural Chance Produce Materials Evolution Structure Species Complexes Association Organs Unseen Selection Novelty Natural Selection

Book:Travaux scientifiques de François Jacob

Source: Travaux scientifiques de François Jacob

“After having produced aquatic animals of all ranks and having caused extensive variations in them by the different environments provided by the waters, nature led them little by little to the habit of living in the air, first by the water's edge and afterwards on all the dry parts of the globe. These animals have in course of time been profoundly altered by such novel conditions; which so greatly influenced their habits and organs that the regular gradation which they should have exhibited in complexity of organisation is often scarcely recognisable.”

“In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.”

Giving Has Beens Use Science Used Animal Development Evolution Limits Capacity Disappear Permanent Length Organs Diminish

Author:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

“All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.”

Long Use Young Science Individual Sex Loss Common Race Environment Influence Produce Evolution Arise Permanent Organs Acquisition Reproduction Modification

Author:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

“The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.”

Knows Men Needs Doe Use Brain Know How Example Evolution Species Organs Providing Prehistoric Evolution Of Man Prehistoric Man

Author:Arthur Koestler

“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.”