Quotes About Evolution

Twenty years ago many chemists would have defended the theory of bond arms as a satisfactory explanation because they had become accustomed to thinking of it as unique and as ultimate.

Homologue. The same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function.

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.

Coolidge is a better example of evolution than either Bryan or Darrow, for he knows when not to talk, which is the biggest asset the monkey possesses over the human.

The search for historical laws is, I maintain, mistaken in principle.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.

Originally a pupil of Liebig, I became a pupil of Dumas, Gerhardt and Williamson: I no longer belonged to any school.

To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being.

William Henry Flower the Anglican too praised evolution as a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross which had 'encrusted' Christianity 'in the days of ignorance and superstition'.

Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.

Science and technology contribute to the fast-expanding vocabularies of all living civilized tongues at a faster rate than all other fields of human endeavor put together.

As for sticking strictly to presently known science, I will simply point out that we have already experienced at least two major revolutions in science in this century alone.

The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, 'You haven't answered every question with evolution,'... Well, guess what? Science can't answer every question

Humans had spent thousands of years climbing out of caves and building technology so they could reach the moon and live in caves again.

Evolution on the large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.

We should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.

During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.

Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.

We are the accidental result of an unplanned process ... the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable product of any definite process.

Research under a paradigm must be a particularly effective way of inducing paradigm change.

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove.

The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.

Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.