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Speciation Quotes

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Speciation Quotes

“Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin’s theory? Zero.”

Science Evolution Darwinism Scientific Theory Einstein Macroevolution General Relativity Macro Evolution Speciation Scientific Theories Hard Science

Book:Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

Source: Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

“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

“The biggest bursts of speciation that we know about in the history of the earth are soon after great cataclysms, like the extinction of the dinosaurs, which create new opportunities, and all sorts of new forms spring up... So, quite often, the reasons for creativity depend on accidents or disasters that prevent the normal habits being carried out.”

Knows Reason Earth Form Opportunity Creativity Depends Habit Normal Spring Accidents Disaster Extinction Dinosaurs New Opportunity Speciation

Author:Rupert Sheldrake

“Ordinary speciation remains fully adequate to explain the causes and phenomenology of punctuation.”

Causes Ordinary Remains Adequate Punctuation Phenomenology Speciation

Book:The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Source: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

“The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically "sudden" origins at single bedding planes.”

“The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.”

World Believe Different Earth Millions Issues Events Evolution Civilization Billions Astronomy Developing Organisms Probability Lineage Improbability Sagan Speciation

Author:Ernst Mayr

“On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity.”

Believe Earth Millions Events Billions Astronomy Organisms Lineage Speciation

Author:Ernst Mayr

“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. The key to our being here now is time, 4.54 billion (Earth) years of time. Nuclear fission wasn't discovered until long after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace published their original books and papers, for example. Our ability to measure atomic masses wasn't developed until long after their deaths. These features of nature enabled us to reckon the age of the Earth and compare it with speciation rates here.”

Years Long Book Ideas Age Earth Ability Example Keys Evolution Paper Mass Originals Fundamentals Rate Nuclear Billions Compare Features Biology Papers Fission Nuclear Fission Speciation

Author:Bill Nye

“The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of 'punctuated equilibria' than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The history of evolution is not one of stately unfolding, but a story of homeostatic equilibria, disturbed only 'rarely' (i.e. rather often in the fullness of time) by rapid and episodic events of speciation.”

Stories Life Is Events Evolution Notion Rapids Fullness Disturbed Unfolding Equilibrium History Of Life Gradualism Speciation

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It had hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we had been born. . . . These cultural mind prisons. . . . Cultural speciation was clearly a barrier to world peace. So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the ‘global village’ we would propagate prejudice and ignorance.”

“Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.”

Source: Punctuated Equilibrium

“If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are not likely to detect the event of speciation itself. It happens too fast, in too small a group, isolated too far from the ancestral range.”

Ifs Should Looks Happens Records Groups Events Evolution Range Isolated Fossils Rapids Speciation

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.”

Shows Courses Literature Loss Influence Evolution Evidence Wings Fruit Population Isolation Sickness Stem Deficiency Refinement Claws Woody Alterations Heredity Mutation Summary Speciation

Author:Lynn Margulis