Biology

"I speak about universal evolution and teleological evolution, because I think the process of evolution reflects the wisdom of nature. I see the need for wisdom to become operative. We need to try to put all of these things together in what I call an evolutionary philosophy of our time."

"I judge things from an evolutionary perspective — "How does this serve and contribute to the process of our own evolution?" — rather than think of good and evil in moral terms. I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution."

"I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. I call it "teleological evolution," evolution with a purpose. The idea of evolution by design, designing the future, anticipating the future. I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?"

"When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it is for that reason that I speak of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better — ever so much slightly better — at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it."

"Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others."

"Equidem æterna constitutione crediderim nexuque causarum latentium et multo ante destinatarum suum quemque ordinem immutabili lege percurrere."

"No individual organism understands that they need the rest of the ecosystem. That ecosystems reach an equilibrium state until perturbed is not through conscious actions. Evolution isn't a competition, it's just evolution. Traits that increase survival and reproduction get propagated. Organisms don't think about the future. We can see that clearly with humans."

"Germs and disease vectors are moving targets, and evolution is the reason for this. Evolution happens in hospitals... over the course of just a few months. What you don't know about evolution can kill you."

"Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae."

"There is consensus among biologists that evolution is the core theme of biology. The evolutionary changes seen in the fossil record are observable facts. Furthermore, as we’ll describe, evolutionary mechanisms account for the unity and diversity of all species on Earth."

"An organism’s adaptations to its environment, such as the dandelion seed’s parachute, are the result of evolution. Evolution is the process of change that has transformed life on Earth from its earliest beginnings to the diversity of organisms living today. Because evolution is the fundamental organizing principle of biology, it is the core theme of this book."

"The Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."

"Even in her transfigured state, the thought of goal-oriented evolution gave Evelyn the creeps. It smacked of Intelligent Design, the ludicrous evangelism of engineers masquerading as biologists, their PowerPoint presentations riddled with evasions and half-truths and pseudoscience. Such thinking confused causes and effects; it complicated unnecessarily the idea of evolution, a field where explanations are valuable only for their parsimony."

"But, be that as it may, is this variation, or variations, beneficial to humanity in their environment? According to Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg, the X-men do have “helpful mutations..." This point is demonstrated numerous times in the adventures of the X-Men, where team members use their mutant powers to help them survive dangerous situations where normal humans would be killed instantly” (Gresh and Weinberg 2002, 135). What Gresh and Weinberg have overlooked, however, is that these “dangerous situations” came after the genetic variation, not before. Most of the battles the X-Men fight are either against other mutants-- such as Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who have a more violent response to human oppression of mutants-- or against anti-mutant hate groups, such as the Sentinels or Friends of Humanity, whose only goal is to wipe out all mutants. All of these “dangerous situations” come up in response to the X-Men’s genetic variation, meaning that this variation cannot be an adaptive response to an environment. Of course, under the theory of evolution by natural selection, every mutation need not necessarily be useful. However, the premise of the X-Men franchise is that these mutations are the foundation of the next phase of human evolution, so these mutations must provide some sort of selective advantage in order for that to be true. However, these variations seem much more likely to be selected against, since they get the X-Men into so much trouble. Assuming that the X-Men survive long enough to reproduce and care for offspring, very few potential mates are going to be willing to take the genetic risk of mating and producing offspring with them. The comics themselves support this, when the X-Men are ostracized from society as “dangerous.” Thus, the X-Men cannot possibly be the next stage of human evolution because their adaptations are neither advantageous, nor likely to be passed down to future generations. However, we buy into the notion that the X-Men are the logical progression of our species because they conform to our notions of evolution as something that follows a progression from simple-structured and simple-minded to physical and mental complexity. Because the variations that the X-Men exhibit are flashy, complex, and, very often, associated with some mystical higher functioning of the brain (such as Xavier’s telepathy and Magneto’s ability to move metal with his mind), they are embraced as the next phase, regardless of environmental pressures or sexual selection."

"The idea that evolution must naturally proceed from simple creatures to more complex creatures is almost overpowering. The X-men are frequently referred to as the “next step” in human evolution (X-Men: First Class 2011; Gresh and Weinberg 2002, 133). According to Darwin, in order for evolution to occur, an individual must exhibit a variation that makes it better suited to its environment and then that variation must be selected for and passed down to future generations. When that variation has accumulated throughout the species, the species is considered to have evolved. Playing by Darwin’s rules, then, in order for the X-men to be the “next step” in human evolution, they must have a variation, that variation must prove useful in their environment, and that variation must be passed down to offspring."

"As in “My Three Crichtons", we have an episode from a science fiction show that is presenting evolution as something for which an organism’s genes have a solid, unchanging blueprint: an organism’s evolutionary path is preset, and by speeding up the passage of time relative to the individual, processes that would ordinarily take centuries or even millennia, like evolution, can now happen in a matter of days. What might have made more sense, if Star Trek insists on speeding up time, would be an accelerated birthrate as a result of this accelerated time, meaning that hundreds or even thousands of generations inherited slight genetic variations, were selected for or against, and (relatively) slowly evolved into the legged catfish-like creatures that the crew of Voyager discovers. In choosing not to take this route, however, “Threshold” is advancing an understanding of evolution that presents it as a linear progression encoded in an individual’s DNA, and thus, through some kind of mystical science, an individual could realize his species evolutionary potential within his lifetime."

"[I]t is interesting that the defining characteristic of this future Crichton is his extraordinary intelligence and reasoning capabilities. This furthers the idea that evolution follows a trajectory towards more complex organisms and towards more intelligent organisms. This is consistent with the episode’s premise that evolution occurs irrespective of environment, but it is inconsistent with mechanism of evolution in actuality. The only trajectory evolution follows is one towards fitness for an organism’s environment. Human beings are very well adapted for our environment, but jellyfish are equally as well adapted to their environment, as are Moya’s many inhabitants to their environments."

"Not only is human evolution linear in the Farscape universe, but it also follows a pre-set trajectory towards increasing complexity. The next step after original Crichton is “advanced” Crichton, distinguished by the folded indentations in his forehead, evidence of a huge brain that is literally too big for his skull. A separate paper could be written about how extraordinarily disadvantageous such a variation would be, but what is equally interesting is the premise of the episode that states that “advanced” Crichton was “evolved” from original Crichton’s DNA. The implicit argument here is that humanity’s evolutionary trajectory is preset. Human beings will evolve in a particular way, regardless of anything else around them."

"Gould discusses iconographies like the “great chain of being” and the “march of progress” as influencing our perceptions of evolution. Today “family tree”-style pictures are beginning to replace the traditional image of the “march of progress” in biology textbooks. However, outside academia, there are still countless visual representations of evolution that maintain the fiction that evolution inevitably follows a certain predetermined linear progression and that that trajectory moves towards humanoid bodies and human or superhuman brains. Science fiction movies, TV shows, and comic books are powerful iconographies in today’s society, continuing to perpetuate the myth of trajectory-based evolution. According to the sci-fi genre, evolution follows an internal “blueprint,” a preset trajectory that takes organisms from simplicity to complexity for complexity’s sake."

"New knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."

"It can therefore be said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution."

"Development of an organism from a single germ cell into a multicellular entity is a self-organizing system from any point of view and I wish to contend that this self-organizing system is a subsystem of the self-organizing system called 'evolution'."

"We conclude — unexpectedly — that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation. We hasten to add, however, that we are not "macromutationists" who believe that adaptations are nearly always based on major genes. The neo-Darwinian view could well be correct. … We hope to encourage evolutionists to reexamine this neglected question and to provide evidence to settle it."

"Evolution is cleverer than you are."

"Most of us make one of two basic assumptions: we view the universe as a result of random events and life on this planet a matter of chance; or we assume an Intelligence beyond the universe who gives the universe order, and life meaning."

"Pouter, tumbler, and fantail are from the same source; The racer and hack may be traced to one Horse; So men were developed from monkeys of course, Which nobody can deny."

"We do not have to adapt to the environment. We will change the environment to suit us."

"Man, in that sense, will never die, because there may never be a taxonomical point in his evolutionary progress that can be determined as the last stage of man in the cline turning him into Neohomo, or some horrible throbbing slime."

"Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology."

"Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it."

"Evolution is a two-part process."

"Ever since language allowed human cultural evolution to impinge upon age-old processes of biological evolution, humankind has been in a position to upset older balances of nature in quite the same fashion as disease upsets the natural balance within a host's body. Time and again, a temporary approach to stabilization of new relationships occurred as natural limits to the ravages of humankind upon other life forms manifested themselves. Yet, sooner or later, and always within a span of time that remained miniscule in comparison with the standards of biological evolution, humanity discovered new techniques allowing fresh exploitation of hitherto inaccessible forms of life."

"[P]hysical scientists who desire, unselfconsciously, to uplift their fellow humans, endure with difficulty the thought that the destiny of mankind rests supinely in the power of the unbound electron. Mechanistic determinism is abhorred just as whole-heartedly by many a man of letters who sees no logical escape from its tentacles, as it is by “fundamentalist” preachers who see in the triumph of materialism a prospective loss of their own bread and butter. Most dreaded of all mechanistic tenets, apparently, is Darwinian evolution. That monkey has made man in his own image is felt to be a degrading thought. Why? Because such a conclusion is taken to taken to mean that man, once made, continues to be controlled by the same elementary forces which originally produced him. But biological evolution, even if true, entails no such implications. Monkey (or the common ancestor), may have caused man to evolve into his present form ; but man, on the other hand, can now create new types of monkeys at will, by exercising a controlling influence over their breeding habits. And this is the very type of causation idealized by the vitalists. Man, the complex, sets causes in motion which influence the nature of monkey, the simpler animal. Moreover, while the materialistic supposition that monkey originally created man is beyond our present powers of verification, the influence exercised by man over monkey can be observed, any day, in the laboratory. In this argument, at least, we must concede that the vitalists’ variety of causation is more solidly upheld by facts than is the mechanistic type of cause raised by materialists to epic grandeur in the sage of biological evolution. We must admit that while the vitalists begin their theorizing with fictional flights, the materialists conclude their doctrines with an almost equally speculative sublimation of their underlying emotional set. Also, in justice to both, it may be said that the vitalistic account of causation is just as much an accurate observation of physical fact, as is the mechanistic account. Simpler energy units constantly influence more complex units and may, under favourable conditions, control their behavior, while more intricate assemblages of force, by virtue of new attributes derived from their complexity, as constantly compel compliance from cruder types of matter, and do, under our very eyes, completely regulate the simpler energy forms. Physical science must and does include both mechanistic and vitalistic types of causation."

"Despite the babbling of the creationists, evolution is inevitable in a competitive world, and it does work."

"Why don't we see gradual transition in the sequences of fossils? According to Darwin, and the current neo-Darwinists, the fossil record has gaps in it because of the haphazard way in which fossilization occurs — it is bound to be an imperfect record of the history of life. But is it? Is the jerky and abrupt nature of the record really just due to 'gaps', or does it reflect the way evolution actually happened? There is a strong feeling among leading palaeontologists that the punctuated history shown by fossils reflects the way life has evolved — in leaps and bounds rather than in gradual transition. There is also a growing sense that there is much more to understanding 'macroevolution' — the large-scale picture one gets from the fossils — than the simple idea of natural selection can alone explain."

"I wouldn’t get out of bed for 25,000 genes, and we don’t find form in the genome. We share most of our DNA with chimpanzees, but nowhere in the genome have we found what it is that makes us so different from chimps."

"Evolution is at the heart of who we are, what life is on this planet."

"Take Eva Lution, an' what does she say 'Bout how we all sprang from an ape? An' there's the goriller and big chimpanzee, Patterned exactly our shape. An' I've seen some folks, an' I guess so have you, An' it ain't none of our bizness neither, That actually looked like they sprang from an ape, An' didn't have fur to spring either."

"Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and others formulated definite evolutionary theories, but it was left to Charles Darwin to give the convincing demonstration of the fact of evolution, and in providing this demonstration Darwin made what is perhaps the greatest contribution that has ever been made to the sum of human knowledge. There is probably no department of human knowledge that has not felt its vitalizing influence."

"Evolution is not just "chance caught on the wing". It is not just a tinkering of the ad hoc, of bricolage, of contraption. It is emergent order honored and honed by selection."

"Natural selection … works like a tinkerer."

"Asking general questions led to limited answers, asking limited questions turned out to provide more and more general answers."

"The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious — fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance."

"We have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms."

"So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression."

"But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must still remain uncertain, whether all the excellencies of the work can justly be ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labour lost; many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. In such subjects, who can determine, where the truth; nay, who can conjecture where the probability, lies; amidst a great number of hypotheses which may be proposed, and a still greater number which may be imagined?"

"Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide [chain of essential life substances] right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for survival. This situation is well known to geneticists and yet nobody seems to blow the whistle decisively on the theory."

"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection."

"Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."

"Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form: Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same."