“Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.” NumbersTheoryCircumstancesCapableOrganismsVariationVaryGeneralization Author:George C. Williams
“This influential, yet controversial idea requires that the mixture of species on Earth at any moment acts as a collective organism that continuously (yet unwittingly) tunes Earth's atmospheric composition and climate to promote the presence of life... But I'd bet there are some dead Martians and Venusians who advanced the same theory about their own planets a billion years ago.” YearsIdeasMomentsEarthSciencePlanetsTheoryYears AgoClimateSpeciesBillionsTunesCollectivesCompositionOrganismsMixturesInfluentialControversialMartians Book:Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries Source: Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
“Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of human personality. His insistence on the sanctity of nature was part of an attempt to develop Goethe's intuition that form cannot be put together in the mind by an additive process, but is to be deduced from the laws of growth in living organisms, and their resistance to the elements.” MindHumansArtWholeShowsTogetherFormLawValuesProcessGrowthMoralTheoryPersonalityActivityElementsIntuitionResistanceEngagedOrganismsSanctityHuman ActivityInsistenceLiving OrganismsHuman PersonalityAdditives Book:Selected Writings Source: Selected Writings
“Group selection and individual selection are just two of the selection processes that have played important roles in evolution. There also is selection within individual organisms (intragenomic conflict), and selection among multi-species communities (an idea that now is getting attention in work on the human microbiome). All four of these levels of selection find a place in multi-level selection theory.” HumansTwoImportantIdeasIndividualProcessCommunityLevelsAttentionRolesFourGroupsTheoryEvolutionConflictSpeciesOrganismsSelection Author:Elliott Sober
“Trait X is fitter than trait Y in a population of organisms if those organisms have other biological traits T and live in an environment that has properties E. The theory of natural selection is filled with statements of this form.” IfsFormNaturalEnvironmentTheoryFilledPropertyPopulationStatementsTraitsOrganismsSelectionNatural Selection Author:Elliott Sober