“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.” MayHas BeensBookLastsCertainForceNaturalHalfAcceptingEnvironmentImagineInfluenceExampleDesignMaterialsTheoryEvolutionCampaignsLocalsDozenSelectionMisunderstandingAdaptationVariationNatural SelectionArthurRejectingRaw MaterialsConductingDarwinismGood DesignCapricious Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.” WorldWellsHas BeensMadeDifferentMatterEnoughMightPastForceEnvironmentFineProveMassBuiltPerfectionCurrentsAvailableCuriousOur WorldImperfectionTransformedSelectionMight Have BeenAdaptationJuryAdaptedQuirkyOmnipotentRiggedOptimal Author:Stephen Jay Gould