Evolution

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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 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."

"Things evolve to evolve. Evolutionary processes are the linchpin of change. These processes of discovery represent a complexity of simple systems that flux in perpetual tension as they teeter at the edge of chaos. This whirlwind of emergence is responsible for the spontaneous order and higher, organized complexity so noticeable in biological evolution—one–celled critters beefing up to become multicellular organisms."

"The hallmark of evolution is its ability to process situations and generate order without relying on the crutch of a conscious designer. Most complex systems grow organically, solutions evolving through unguided and mindless forces, never reaching any final state."

"Molecular biologists may have ignored mitochondria because they did not immediately recognize the far-reaching implications and applications of the discovery... It took time to accumulate a database of sufficient scope and content to address the many challenging questions related to anthropology, disease, evolution, and more."

"I do not believe in evolution … and none of your professors believe in evolution. … Beliefs are opinions."

"If I did not think you a good tempered & truth loving man I should not tell you that... I have read your book [On the Origin of Species] with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false & grievously mischievous— You have deserted—after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth—the the true method of induction. … I have written in a hurry & in a spirit of brotherly love."

"You grow, we all grow, we're made to grow. You either evolve or disappear."

"Тhе сепtгаl роіпt геmаіпs that Darwin provided a theory which predicts that organisms should have parts adapted to ensure their survival and . This has led to the suggestion that life should be defined by the possession of those properties which are needed to ensure evolution by natural selection. That is, entities with the properties of multiplication, variation, and are alive, and entities lacking one or more of those properties are not."

"This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step."

"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish, in the Palæozoic time And side by side in the sluggish tide, we sprawled in the ooze and slime."

"Before I gifted Picard my golem my intention was to live beyond my years. To become my own legacy. Now I see, in my final days, that wasn't just poor humanity, it was poor science. Because evolution is not an act of preservation. It's addition."

"This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.""

"Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations."

"Der ungeteilte Schöpfungsakt ist in der geschaffenen Welt wirksam nur auf die Weise der Evolution."

"Heute [...] geben neue Erkenntnisse dazu Anlass, in der Evolutionstheorie mehr als eine Hypothese zu sehen. Es ist in der Tat bemerkenswert, dass diese Theorie nach einer Reihe von Entdeckungen in unterschiedlichen Wissensgebieten immer mehr von der Forschung akzeptiert wurde. Ein solches unbeabsichtigtes und nicht gesteuertes Übereinstimmen von Forschungsergebnissen stellt schon an sich ein bedeutsames Argument zugunsten dieser Theorien dar."

"Tausende von Forschungsarbeiten haben gezeigt, dass die Evolution ein realhistorischer Prozess ist. Kein vernünftiger Mensch, der die internationale Fachliteratur kennt, würde das bezweifeln."

"Stammt der Mensch, wenn auch als der höchste, geläutertste Sprößling, aus dem Thierreich her, so ist er von Hause aus ein irrationelles Wesen; es wird, bei allen Fortschritten von Vernunft und Wissenschaft, doch die Natur, Begierde und Zorn, immer eine große Gewalt über ihn behalten;"

"Religion kann die Evolution als Schöpfung interpretieren. Naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis kann Schöpfung als evolutiven Prozeß konkretisieren. Religion kann so dem Ganzen der Evolution einen Sinn zuschreiben, den die Naturwissenschaft von der Evolution nicht ablesen, bestenfalls vermuten kann."

"Man muss doch sehen, dass Gottes Rolle seit Äonen schrumpft. Anfangs wurde er noch für Adam und Eva gebraucht, dann hieß es, er habe die Evolution ins Rollen gebracht. Die Erkenntnisse der Kosmologie zeigen uns jedoch: Leben entwickelt sich überall dort, wo es kann. Gott kann keine neuen Arten erschaffen, er vollbringt keine Wunder, er passt auf keine Stellenausschreibung."

"Evolution schafft Ordnung. Deshalb wird manchmal behauptet, sie stehe im Widerspruch zum »Entropiegesetz« der Physik, wonach alle Entwicklungsvorgänge zu einer Zunahme der Unordnung führen. In Wirklichkeit existiert dieser Widerspruch nicht: Das Entropiegesetz gilt nämlich nur für geschlossene System, die Evolution einer biologischen Art findet aber in einem offenen System statt, in dem die Lebewesen auf Kosten der Umwelt eine Entropieabnahme herbeiführen können, wobei die Sonne für ständige Energiezufuhr sorgt."

"Es gibt aber eine Art des Wandels, die sich offensichtlich kontinuierlich fortsetzt und so etwas wie eine Richtung zu haben scheint. Diesen Wandel bezeichnet man als Evolution oder Entwicklungsgeschichte.."

"Die Naturwissenschaften konnten unserem Leben keinen Sinn geben, weil sie keine zielgerichtete Evolution des Universums oder des Lebens fanden – und wohl auch nie finden werden."

"Die Entdeckung der Evolution schließt die Einsicht ein, dass unsere Gegenwart mit absoluter Sicherheit nicht das Ende (oder gar das Ziel) der Entwicklung sein kann."