Biological Evolution Quotes

• Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Health, Science, Light

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• Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time.

  David M. Raup

  Example, Transition, Fossils

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• Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation

  Carl Sagan

  Animal, Men, Creation

  Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.5, Cambridge University Press

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• Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Groups, Paleontology, Levels

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.260, W. W. Norton & Company

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• All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?

  Lynn Margulis

  Groups, Extinction, Ancestry

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• Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Stupidity, Design, Religion

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.260, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Information distilled over 4 billion years of biological evolution. Incidentally, all the organisms on the Earth are made essentially of that stuff. An eyedropper full of that liquid could be used to make a caterpillar or a petunia if only we knew how to put the components together.

  Carl Sagan

  Years, Together, Atoms

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 5: "Blues For a Red Planet", 1990.

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• The consciousness of lucid dreaming is a cultural evolution. It's something that we are talking about and learning about, not biological evolution.

  Stephen LaBerge

  Dream, Talking, Evolution

  "The Edge of Dreaming". PBS Live Chat, www.pbs.org. August 24, 2010.

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• The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. however, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.

  Ray Kurzweil

  People, Energy, Next Steps

  Ray Kurzweil (2005). “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology”, p.498, Penguin

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• Mosts scientist are unable to arrive at a specific definition of biological evolution. “Biological evolution is… change in the properties of populations of organisms (you and me) that [happen during] the lifetime of a single individual. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next

  Douglas J. Futuyma

  Population, Generations, Definitions

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• In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual.

  Douglas J. Futuyma

  Political, Population, Evolution

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• But nature - that is, biological evolution - has not fitted man to any specific environment. On the contrary, ... he has a rather crude survival kit; and yet -this is the paradox of the human condition - one that fits him to all environments. Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Emotional, Animal

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• The central problem of biological evolution is the nature of mutation, but hitherto the occurrence of this has been wholly refractory and impossible to influence by artificial means, although a control of it might obviously place the process of evolution in our hands.

  Hermann Joseph Muller

  Mean, Science, Hands

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• It [AI] would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded.

  Stephen Hawking

  Would Be, Evolution, Programming

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• Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Dust, Next, Evolution

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• The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a Savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.

  Frank Zindler

  Jesus, Real, Thinking

  "Why evolution hurts the church" by David Catchpoole, creation.com. October 26, 2014.

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• The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

  David Deutsch

  Niche, Evolution, Problem

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• It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.

  Clayton Christensen

  World, Corporations, Population

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

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• It is essential for evolution to become the central core of any educational system, because it is evolution, in the broad sense, that links inorganic nature with life, and the stars with the earth, and matter with mind, and animals with man. Human history is a continuation of biological evolution in a different form.

  Julian Huxley

  Stars, Educational, Men

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• Darwinan evolution is limited to the biological aspect but before that happened the molecules themselves had to evolve to enable this further (biological) evolution.

  Jean-Marie Lehn

  Molecules, Evolution, Aspect

  Source: www.lindau-nobel.org

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• Evolution has just been dealt its death blow. After reading Origins of Life with my background in chemistry and physics, it is clear that biological evolution could not have occurred.

  Richard Smalley

  Reading, Blow, Origin Of Life

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• The social dynamics of human history, even more than that of biological evolution, illustrate the fundamental principle of ecological evolution - that everything depends on everything else. The nine elements that we have described in societal evolution of the three families of phenotypes - the phyla of things, organizations and people, the genetic bases in knowledge operating through energy and materials to produce phenotypes, and the three bonding relations of threat, integration and exchange - all interact on each other.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Organization, People, Energy

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• My colleague Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, erroneously suggested that I support the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. That simply is not true. ... Unlike biological evolution, intelligent design is not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school science classes.

  Edward Kennedy

  Teaching, School, Intelligent

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• We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.

  Carl Sagan

  Animal, Men, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.5, Cambridge University Press

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• I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution , where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment... only to vanish forever.

  Alan Watts

  Wave Of Life, Light, Forever

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.11, Souvenir Press

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