Evolution Quotes - Page 17

I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.

Joseph Dalton Hooker

Book, Thinking

Joseph Dalton Hooker, Leonard Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M., G.C.S.I.”, p.511, Cambridge University Press

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I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and the different stages of their growth in the egg,-this is all. It chanced to be a result that was found to apply to other groups and has led to other conclusions of a like nature.

Louis Agassiz

Nature, Science, Eggs

Louis Agassiz (2003). “Agassiz on Evolution: Methods of study in natural history”

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I have watched all the work going on there, and the more I see of it the more I am convinced that Mendelism has nothing to do with evolution.

Ernest MacBride

Science, Convinced

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It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.

Gardner Murphy

Science, Men, Pigs

Gardner Murphy (1947). “Personality”

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It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called "educated classes" are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.

Ernst Haeckel

Ignorance, Science, Men

Ernst Haeckel (1883). “The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny”

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Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.

George Gaylord Simpson

Mean, Responsibility, Science

George Gaylord Simpson (1967). “The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man”, p.311, Yale University Press

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Man is a megalomaniac among animals-if he sees mountains he will try to imitate them by pyramids, and if he sees some grand process like evolution, and thinks it would be at all possible for him to be in on that game, he would irreverently have to have his whack at that too. That daring megalomania of his-has it not brought him to his present place?

Jacques Loeb

Science, Animal, Men

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Morphological information has provided the greatest single source of data in the formulation and development of the theory of evolution and that even now, when the preponderance of work is experimental, the basis for interpretation in many areas of study remains the form and relationships of structures.

Everett C. Olson

Science, Data, Theory Of Evolution

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Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. ... Everything science has taught me-and continues to teach me-strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.

Wernher von Braun

Inspirational, Death, Spiritual

Wernher Von Braun (2007). “The Voice of Dr. Wernher Von Braun: An Anthology”, Collectors Guide Pub

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Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

Nature, Blessed, Science

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Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming!" That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world.

Ernst Haeckel

Life, Change, Science

Ernst Haeckel (1904). “Wonders of life”

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Of these three essential factors, space might be said to be one with which biogeography is primarily concerned. However space necessarily interplays with time and form, therefore the three factors are as one of biogeographic concern.

Leon Croizat

Science, Space, Essentials

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On consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end.

David Lack

Character, Science, Differences

David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.54, CUP Archive

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On the whole, at least in the author's experience, the preparation of species-specific antiserum fractions and the differentiation of closely related species with precipitin sera for serum proteins does not succeed so regularly as with agglutinins and lysins for blood cells. This may be due to the fact that in the evolutional scale the proteins undergo continuous variations whereas cell antigens are subject to sudden changes not linked by intermediary stages.

Karl Landsteiner

Science, Cells, Blood

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One must believe that every living thing whatsoever must change insensibly in its organization and in its form... One must therefore never expect to find among living species all those which are found in the fossil state, and yet one may not assume that any species has really been lost or rendered extinct.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Believe, Science, Organization

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All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Sex, Loss, Science

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So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.

Johann Gottfried Herder

Book, Science, Men

Johann Gottfried Herder (1800). “Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man”, p.259

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The chemical differences among various species and genera of animals and plants are certainly as significant for the history of their origins as the differences in form. If we could define clearly the differences in molecular constitution and functions of different kinds of organisms, there would be possible a more illuminating and deeper understanding of question of the evolutionary reactions of organisms than could ever be expected from morphological considerations.

Ray Lankester

Science, Animal, Differences

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The decisive step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations.

Richard Goldschmidt

Science, Firsts, Steps

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The distinguishing of the strata, or layers, in the embryonic membrane was a turning-point in the study of the history of evolution, and placed later researches in their proper light. A division of the (disc-shaped) embryo into an animal and a plastic part first takes place. In the lower part (the plastic or vegetative layer) are a serous and a vascular layer, each of peculiar organization. In the upper part also (the animal or serous germ-layer) two layers are clearly distinguishable, a flesh-layer and a skin-layer. (1828)

Karl Ernst von Baer

Animal, Light, Organization

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The doctrine of evolution implies the passage from the most organised to the least organised, or, in other terms, from the most general to the most special. Roughly, we say that there is a gradual 'adding on' of the more and more special, a continual adding on of new organisations. But this 'adding on' is at the same time a 'keeping down'. The higher nervous arrangements evolved out of the lower keep down those lower, just as a government evolved out of a nation controls as well as directs that nation.

John Hughlings Jackson

Science, Government, Special

John Hughlings Jackson (1931). “Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson: Evaluation and dissolution of the nervous system. Speech. Various papers, addresses and lectures”

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The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is, and always will be, a wild animal.

Charles Galton Darwin

Science, Animal, Men

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The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Science, Men, Organization

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The History of Evolution is the real source of light in the investigation of organic bodies. It is applicable at every step, and all our ideas of the correlation of organic bodies will be swayed by our knowledge of the history of evolution. To carry the proof of it into all branches of research would be an almost endless task. (1828)

Karl Ernst von Baer

Real, Science, Light

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The meaning that we are seeking in evolution is its meaning to us, to man. The ethics of evolution must be human ethics. It is one of the many unique qualities of man, the new sort of animal, that he is the only ethical animal. The ethical need and its fulfillment are also products of evolution, but they have been produced in man alone.

George Gaylord Simpson

Science, Animal, Unique

George Gaylord Simpson (1956). “The Meaning of Evolution”

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