Best natural & selection Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today, but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes. There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don't try that again.”

Trying Different Today Natural Design Intelligent Different Things Pilots Airplane Crash Selection Natural Selection Intelligent Design

Author:Burt Rutan

“Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.”

World Problem Can Do Natural Animal Cases Invention Faster Selection Natural Selection

Author:Vernor Vinge

“Proponents of intelligent design don't accept that some of the very complex nanomachines that we have inside ourselves could have come about solely on the basis of natural selection.”

Natural Accepting Design Bases Intelligent Complexes Selection Natural Selection Intelligent Design

Author:Francis Collins

“Natural selection deals ruthlessly with any population, bird or beaver, which fails to solve the problems of its environment with all those resources, learned or unlearned, which may be at its disposal.”

May Problem Natural Deals Environment Failing Evolution Bird Resources Population Solve Selection Natural Selection Beavers

Book:THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE

Source: THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE

“What could not be denied was that in vast segments of the animal world natural selection of the most qualified individuals took place not by competition for females but by competition for space.”

World Individual Natural Space Animal Evolution Female Competition Denied Selection Qualified Natural Selection Animal World

Book:AFRICAN GENISIS

Source: AFRICAN GENISIS

“One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don't. You have compassion, you try and help people. It's a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything.”

People Trying Two Helping Happens Natural Compassion Fundamentals Selection Clash Love Each Other Natural Selection

Author:Bill Nighy

“Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.”

Natural Society Opposites Selfish Selection Natural Selection Mutation Selfish Gene

Author:Richard Dawkins

“To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree”

Source: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

“anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently.”

Writing Natural Common Society Subjects Theory Evolution Mechanism Selection Natural Selection Descent Speciation

Author:Ernst Mayr

“Not every good idea survives. Not every new form of art is repeated. Not every new potential instinct is successful. Only the successful ones get repeated. By natural selection and then through repetition they become probable, more habitual.”

Art Ideas Form Natural Successful Art Is Instinct Very Good Good Ideas Repetition Selection Natural Selection Habitual

Author:Rupert Sheldrake

“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.”

“Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower" animals with simple nervous systems arise as genetic products of natural selection, then human behavior should have a similar basis.”

“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

Wells Might Form Natural Environment Greater Behavior Function Simplicity Locals Complexity Yield Selection Adaptation Natural Selection Habitat Natural Habitats

Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.”

Humans Culture Courses Force Social Natural Effects Evolution Institutions Climate Selection Predator Human Evolution Social Institutions Food Supply

Book:The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology

Source: The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology

“Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives.”

Natural Species Dna Selection Rivals Natural Selection Archives

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

“As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.”

Natural Progress Perfection Selection Natural Selection Endowment Origin Of Species

Book:On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

Source: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

“Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.”

Mean Long Has Beens Natural Remains Convinced Obscure Selection Exclusive Natural Selection Modification

Book:The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species

Source: The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species

“The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done by our brains, and essential both to our cultures and to our very survival, are epiphenomena of the computing power of this machine, not genetically grounded Darwinian entities created specifically by natural selection for their current function.”

Knows Humans Done Culture Causes Natural Brain Essentials Survival Machines Function Currents Entity Grounded Selection Natural Selection Human Brain Computing Good Causes

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases - the second law of thermodynamics - holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law [the fundamental theorem of natural selection] should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences.”

Thinking Should Littles Law Natural Position Increase Fundamentals Supreme Professors Selection Laws Of Nature Natural Selection Theorems Entropy Thermodynamics Biological Science

Author:Ronald Fisher

“The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.”

“Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.”

May Facts Turns Universe Natural Existence Theory Evolution Explanation Remarkable Selection Natural Selection Theory Of Evolution

Book:The Theory of Evolution

Source: The Theory of Evolution

“In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.”

Source: Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings

“What had been released into the desert vacuum and starry oases of the galaxy was the inexorable logic of reproduction and natural selection. What followed was parasitism, predation, symbiosis, interdependency chaos, complexity, life.”

Natural Logic Chaos Desert Complexity Galaxy Selection Vacuums Natural Selection Reproduction Oasis Inexorable Symbiosis

Book:Vortex

Source: Vortex

“The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).”

“As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.”

“If I were to give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I'd give it to Darwin for the idea of natural selection - ahead of Newton, ahead of Einstein - because his idea unites the two most disparate features of our universe: the world of purposeless, meaningless matter and motion, particles jostling on the one side, and the world of meaning and purpose, design on the other.”

Ifs World Giving Two Ideas Matter Purpose Universe Sides Natural Design Features Prize Meaningless Selection Particles Newton Natural Selection

Author:Daniel Dennett

“The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."”

People Thinking Ideas Happens Used Purpose Natural Views Design Tradition Bottom Creator Traditional Uncomfortable Reverse Selection Saying No Natural Selection Think Of Me Top Down

Author:Daniel Dennett

“After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures great and small to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being perhaps just the chooser of the laws. By the time God's role has been so diminished, he becomes a bit like a constitutional monarch, presiding ceremonially but not having any more work to do. That's a place for God if it makes people comfortable to keep God as the presider over the universe. I suppose that is satisfying for many.”

People Ifs Has Beens Law Universe Bits Natural Roles Creatures Comfortable Designer Satisfying Selection Laws Of Nature Natural Selection Monarchs

Author:Daniel Dennett

“You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that at least some of that variation is inherited - and the syllogistic inference is natural selection.”

Facts Together Three Natural Produce Organisms Selection Variation Natural Selection Offspring Inference

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a principle or progress; it's just a principle of local adaptation. You don't make better creatures in any cosmic sense; you make creatures that are better suited to the changing climates of their local habitats.”

Three Natural Principles Environment Progress Produce Creatures Climate Productions Locals Factors Cosmic Selection Adaptation Inheritance Variation Natural Selection Habitat

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“The result of the revolution in Germany has been to establish a democracy in the best sense of the word. We are steering towards an order of things guaranteeing a process of a natural and reasonable selection in the domain of political leadership, thanks to which that leadership will be entrusted to the most competent, irrespective of their descent, name or fortune. The memorable words of the great Corsican that every soldier carries a Field Marshal's baton in his knapsack, will find its political complement in Germany.”

“My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection.”

Natural My Own Generations Fields Majors Transformation Tiny Selection Premises Natural Selection Immensity Paleontology Geological Time

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality.”

Has Beens Natural Majors Odd Biology Mechanism Discovering Selection Adaptation Natural Selection Fundamentalist Evolutionary Biology

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.”

Doe Ideas Reason Religion Process Natural Generations Atheism Evolution Diversity Negative Critical Arguing Weed Skepticism New Ideas Selection Natural Selection

Author:Steven Novella

“Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and to evolution.”

Mind May Sex Natural Differences Principles Subjects Evolution Selection Natural Selection

Author:Antoinette Brown Blackwell

“Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection.”

Writing Facts Faces Certain Lost Process Natural Levels Views Civilization Fundamentals Saved Optimistic Selection Best Work Natural Selection Regression

Book:The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn

Source: The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn

“Human rights are an aspect of natural law, a consequence of the way the universe works, as solid and as real as photons or the concept of pi. The idea of self- ownership is the equivalent of Pythagoras' theorem, of evolution by natural selection, of general relativity, and of quantum theory. Before humankind discovered any of these, it suffered, to varying degrees, in misery and ignorance.”

“In a knowledge economy, natural selection favors organizations that can most effectively harness and coordinate collective intellectual energy and creative capacity.”

Energy Natural Economy Creative Intellectual Capacity Organization Favors Collectives Selection Natural Selection Harness Coordinates

Author:Justin Rosenstein

“The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too.”

“Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create.”

Natural Selection Natural Selection

Author:Lynn Margulis

“The new advocates of ID [Intelligent Design] ask that their ideas be judged by scientific, not religious, criteria. OK, let's see how well ID stacks up as a scientific alternative to Darwinism. To gauge how well ID is doing as a platform for scientific research, I logged into the best database of the biological literature. A search for keyword ''evolution'' yielded 24,000 hits in the last decade. A search for ''intelligent design'' yielded not a single piece of research. Evolution by natural selection remains the basis of every successful biological research program.”

“Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.”

Kind Suffering Natural Atheism Consequence Positive Atheism Inherent Indifferent Blindness Selection Natural Selection

Book:A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

Source: A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

“The principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God. [It] contradicts the revealed relations of creation to its Creator.”

Natural Principles Creation Relation Creator Scary Word Of God Selection Natural Selection

Author:Samuel Wilberforce

“You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.”

“Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement”

Natural Principles Environment Theory Improvement Locals Guarantees Selection Adaptation Propose Natural Selection Changing Environment

Book:Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

Source: Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”

“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

Ifs Men Sometimes Used Order Term Natural Principles Expression Survival Mark Relation Accurate Selection Variation Convenient Natural Selection Survival Of The Fittest

Author:Charles Darwin

“On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true.”

Ifs World Looks Past Natural Theory Selection Natural Selection Canon Natural History Origin Of Species

Book:On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Source: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

“The right to live does not connote the right of each man to reproduce his kind ... As we lessen the stringency of natural selection, and more and more of the weaklings and the unfit survive, we must increase the standard, mental and physical, of parentage.”

Men Kind Doe Natural Standards Increase Selection Natural Selection

Book:Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics: The Cavendish Lecture, 1912, an Address to the Medical Profession

Source: Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics: The Cavendish Lecture, 1912, an Address to the Medical Profession

“If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.”

Ifs Thinking Has Beens Force Natural Catholic Atheist Fishes Italian Selection Natural Selection

Book:The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

Source: The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

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