Quotes About Evolution

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities

If the organism is not a replicator, what is it? The answer is that it is a communal vehicle for replicators. A vehicle is an entity in which replicators (genes and memes) travel about, an entity whose attributes are affected by the replicators inside it, an entity which may be seen as a compound tool of replicator propagation.

Our mental burka window is narrow because it didn't need to be any wider in order to assist our ancestors to survive.

the culmination of an evolutionary trend towards the emancipation of survival machines as executive decision-takers from their ultimate masters, the genes.

Good' genes are blindly selected as those that survive in the gene pool.

These are claims that could have been made for Lorenz's On Aggression, Ardrey's The Social Contract, and Eibl-Eibesfeldt's Love and Hate. The trouble with these books is that their authors got it totally and utterly wrong. They got it wrong because they misunderstood how evolution works. They made the erroneous assumption that the important thing in evolution is the good of the species (or the group) rather than the good of the individual (or the gene).

If human breeders can transform a wolf into a Pekinese, or a wild cabbage into a cauliflower, in just a few centuries or millennia, why shouldn't the non-random survival of wild animals and plants do the same thing over millions of years?

Bir ça??n dini, bir sonrakinin edebi eÄŸlencesidir. Ralph Waldo

Each gene works in a world of phenotypic consequences of other genes. Some of those other genes will be members of the same genome. Others will be members of the same gene-pool operating through other bodies. Yet others may be members of different gene-pools, different species, different phyla.

Functionally speaking, too, genes are gregarious. They have phenotypic effects on bodies, but they do not do so in isolation. I stress this over and over again in this book.

frequently recommend Miller's book, Finding Darwin's God

When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes.

delayed reciprocal altruism can evolve in species that are capable of recognizing and remembering each other as individuals

Selection favours those genes which succeed in the presence of other genes, which in turn succeed in the presence of them.

Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines who can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error.

even with selfish genes at the helm, nice guys can finish first.

Richard Dawkins

Ä°ÅŸte bu gerçek, yani ak?ll? tasar?m?n kendisine ait bir kan?t?n?n olmamas? ve kendi kan?t? yerine bilimsel bilginin b?rakt??? boÅŸluklarda bir yabani ot gibi geliÅŸmesi, bilim bir boÅŸluk bulduÄŸunda bunun araÅŸt?r?lmas? için çaÄŸr? yapma ihtiyac? aç?s?ndan s?k?nt? yaratan bir ÅŸeydir.

Earlier than about 10,000 years ago, all human populations were hunter gatherers. Soon, probably none will be. Those not extinct will be 'civilised' — or corrupted, depending on your point of view.

J. Anderson Thomson, bir evrimsel psikiyatristin bak?? aç?s?yla bunun için bana baÅŸka bir sebep gösterir: Hepimizin sahip olduÄŸu, cans?z nesneleri sanki birer ajanlarm?? gibi kiÅŸiselleÅŸtirmeye olan psikolojik eÄŸilimimiz. Thomson'un söylediÄŸi üzere, bir gölgeyi h?rs?z sanmaya, bir h?rs?z? gölge sanmaktan daha yatk?n?zd?r.

More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.

Even while the group is going slowly and inexorably downhill, selfish individuals prosper in the short term at the expense of altruists.

Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable.

A branch of one of the cranial nerves, the recurrent laryngeal runs from the brain to the larynx. It doesn't go straight there, however. Instead, it dives down into the chest, loops around one of the main arteries leaving the heart, and proceeds back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe the detour is significant (British understatement) and it is presumably costly. The explanation lies in history, in the nerve's emergence in our fish ancestors before a discernible neck evolved.