Theodosius Dobzhansky Quotes About Evolution

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

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Health, Science, Light

• Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Faith, Religious, Mistake

  "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". "The American Biology Teacher", Volume 35, (pp. 125-129), March 1973.

• Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Sacrifice, Science, Imperfection

• I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Nature, Science, Years

• No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Powerful, Science, Acceptance

• Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can only be doubted by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Block, Emotional, Ignorant

  "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". The American Biology Teacher, volume 35, p.125-9, March, 1973.

• The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific reasons to doubt the facticity of evolution, would be propagating a plain untruth.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Historical, Doubt, Events

  Letter to J. Kunamoto, 1972.

• The business of proving evolution has reached a stage when it is futile for biologists to work merely to discover more and more evidence of evolution. Those who choose to believe that God created every biological species separately in the state we observe them, but made them in a way calculated to lead us to the conclusion that they are the products of an evolutionary development are obviously not open to argument. All that can be said is that their belief is an implicit blasphemy, for it imputes to God an appalling deviousness.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Believe, Development, Way

• Seen in retrospect, evolution as a whole doubtless had a general direction, from simple to complex, from dependence on to relative independence of the environment, to greater and greater autonomy of individuals, greater and greater development of sense organs and nervous systems conveying and processing information about the state of the organism's surroundings, and finally greater and greater consciousness. You can call this direction progress or by some other name.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Simple, Names, Independence

• Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts -- some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Meaningful, Light, Interesting

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