Natural Selection Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Natural Selection". There are currently 241 quotes in our collection about Natural Selection. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Natural Selection!
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  • We live in a cultural milieu ... The idea that culture is our ecological niche is still applicable. The impact and force of natural selection on the human physique are conditioned by the dimensions of culture.

    Impact   Ideas   Culture  
  • Natural selection does not give any preference at all to anything that, in the long run, could be advantageous for the species but blindly rewards everything that, momentarily, affords greater procreative success.

    Running   Long   Giving  
  • In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.

    "Janus: A Summing Up". Book by Arthur Koestler, p. 184-5, 1983.
  • Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on.

    Natural   Select   Arise  
  • In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven't just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply.

    Law   Lasts   Natural  
  • Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection.

    Theodore Levitt (1986). “Marketing Imagination: New, Expanded Edition”, p.127, Simon and Schuster
  • What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern?

    Horse   Men   Hands  
    Charles Darwin (1872). “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.441
  • The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

    Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.44, W. W. Norton & Company
  • 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.

    Ideas   Two   Giving  
    "Big Thinkers on Evolution". NOVA-PBS, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.
  • Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course.

    Wind   Shapes   Sides  
    Asa Gray (1877). “Darwinia: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism”
  • Great is the power of steady misrepresentation

    1859 The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
  • 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.

    Real   World   Limits  
    "The Crucible of Creation". Book by Simon Conway Morris, 1998.
  • I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

    God   Garden   Thinking  
  • We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form: The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.

    "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection". Book by Ronald Fisher, 1930.
  • I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred.

  • I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.

    Charles Darwin (2016). “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution”, p.209, VM eBooks
  • Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.

    Life   Moving   Stones  
    Chauncey Wright (2003). “Philosphical Discussions”, p.108, A&C Black
  • This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character.

    Charles Darwin (1870). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.12
  • I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.

    Charles Darwin, Thomas F. Glick, David Kohn (1996). “On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection”, p.154, Hackett Publishing
  • The moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers. But we should always bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. This fact affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being.

    Past   Justice   Mind  
    Charles Darwin, Michael T. Ghiselin (2010). “The Descent of Man”, p.442, Courier Corporation
  • 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.

    Charles Darwin (2003). “On the Origin of Species”, p.213, Broadview Press
  • The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much.

    Dad   Men   Doctors  
  • It is good to keep in mind ... that nobody has ever succeeded in producing even one new species by the accumulation of micromutations. Darwin's theory of natural selection has never had any proof, yet it has been universally accepted.

    Mind   Accepted   Natural  
  • 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.

    Sex   Differences   Mind  
  • I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

    "Got a problem? Our Evolutionary Agony Aunt can help" by Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com. December 2, 2009.
  • The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit.

  • With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes.

    Charles Darwin (2016). “The Descent of Man (Diversion Classics)”, p.199, Diversion Books
  • Natural selection may lead to benefits for species, but these `higher' advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of natural selection's causal mechanism: differential reproductive success of individuals.

    May   Sides   Benefits  
    Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony
  • Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.

    Interview With Michael Krasny, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.
  • It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

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