#evolution

Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains, as well as the highest centers that allow us to integrate information in our unique way; and some of our newer brain components talk to each other via some very ancient structures indeed. Our brains are makeshift structures, opportunistically assembled by Nature over hundreds of millions of years, and in multiple different ecological contexts. ↗

— Ian Tattersall

#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

History respects revolutions; and yet, if a revolution is progressive, support it; if it is reactionary, resist it! ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#respect

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

My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#evidence #evolution #religion #science #sir-julian-huxley

The ideology and philosophy of neo-Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems. ↗

— Vladimir L. Voeikov

#darwin #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution #macroevolution

Finally, the intercom crackles and Hatmitch's acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, 'And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#humour #revolution

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. ↗

— George Orwell

#revolution