#evolution

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#darwin #evolution #nature

Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse. ↗

— James D. Carswell

#humor #nature #science #nature

Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose. ↗

— Henry Gee

#nature

Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence. ↗

— Michael Denton

#biology #chemical-evolution #darwinism #evolution #naturalism

Nothing endures for so long as fear. Everywhere in nature one sees evidence of innate releasing mechanisms literally millions of years old, which have lain dormant through thousands of generations but retained their power undiminished. The field rat’s inherited image of the hawk’s silhouette is the classic example - even a paper silhouette drawn across a cage sends it rushing frantically for cover. And how else can you explain the universal but completely groundless loathing of the spider, only one species of which has ever been known to sting? Or hatred of snakes and reptiles? Simply because we all carry within us a submerged memory of the time when the giant spiders were lethal, and when the reptiles were the planet’s dominant life form. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#evolutionary-biology #nature

Evolution is a part of nature. The world has strayed away from God, and now interprets its conception for the benefit of blissful ignorance. ↗

— Lionel Suggs

#ignorance #nature

One hand has surely worked throughout the universe. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#religion #science #religion

...but I still think that to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation. ↗

— E.J.H. Corner

#evolution #science #science

Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#science #science

While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#science #science