#selection

It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation). ↗

— Steven Pinker

#evolution #natural-selection #teleology #nature

The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful. ↗

— Paul Bettany

#any #beautiful #difficulty #like #looking

I thought that that was an effort to inject a popular element, a democratic element into the selection of a person who, once he is selected and confirmed, is beyond electoral control. ↗

— Stephen Breyer

#confirmed #control #democratic #effort #electoral

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#complexity #cumulative #evolution #existence #explaining

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous. ↗

— Barbara Ehrenreich

#favors #history #human #human history #natural

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#among #group #individual #members #mix

Ideas percolate. Through natural selection, the best ones survive. ↗

— Andrew Lo

#ideas #natural #natural selection #ones #selection

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species. ↗

— Konrad Lorenz

#determined #did #evolution #face #fact

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. ↗

— Ernst Mayr

#certain #contingent #darwin #evolution #merely

As Mayor, I will fully support my Arts Commission and its professional selection committees so that they can commission a full range of public art that is daring and, when appropriate, daringly traditional. ↗

— Gavin Newsom

#art #arts #commission #committees #daring