Quotes About Evolution

Times go by turns, and chances change by course,From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

History, then, is perceived as a rational process, the unfolding of a design, something with a dynamic to be uncovered.

Nothing stays the same

Shadows like these generated her first sensation of fear when she was a chick. She didn't have to learn to hate shadows from the sky. Nearly all dinosaurs are born with the same preprogrammed response. Those that are unfortunate enough to hatch with a mutant gene that eliminates the shadow-fear don't survive longer than a week. They are snatched from the nest by jaws from above.

When the dinosaurs fell at the end of the Cretaceous, they were not a senile, moribund group that had played out its evolutionary options. Rather they were vigorous, still diversifying into new orders and producing a variety of big-brained carnivores with the highest grade of intelligence yet present on land.

It's a universal phenomenon--if you appear desirable, more members of the opposite sex will desire you. The appearance of popularity automatically raises your popularity. It's not a bad evolutionary system--if you see a potential mate being pursued by members of the opposite sex, it pays to check it out.

Dreaming is an advanced evolutionary exercise, a way the brain can go on an extended journey into that other reality.

When dinosaurs want to communicate, they must use a lot of exaggerated body motions--head-bobs, torso-squats, tail-swooshes--because the range of their facial expressions is so limited. Mammals, as they will evolve in the later Cretaceous and beyond, will have far greater subtlety in body language. Dogs and monkeys and finally humans will acquire ever-greater powers of transmitting emotions through the face.

I'd rather welcome change than cling to the past.

A kind of bias I share says that if a human thinks symmetry is important it may or may not be, but if a bird thinks symmetry is important, it very likely is!

If you do a single thing—and especially if there is a lot of money in that single thing—you should put a 'Welcome, Robots!' doormat outside your office," wrote technology expert Farhad Manjoo in Slate. "They're coming for you.

Automation does not simply supplant human activity but rather changes it, often in ways unintended and unanticipated by the designers. —Automation experts Raja Parasuraman and Dietrich Manzey, 2010

Catastrophe is change on the fast track. Disaster is a laboratory for adaptability.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

The Human Body, Superhuman and Instincts to Threads

from natural selection's point of view, status assistance is the main purpose of friendship.

We are right to say that we never dislike people without a reason. But the reason, often, is that it is not in our interests to like them; liking them won't elevate our social status, aid our acquisition of material or sexual resources, help our kin, or do any of the other things that during evolution have made genes prolific. The feeling of "rightness" accompanying our dislike is just window dressing. Once you've seen that, the feeling's power may diminish.

The idea is that human culture as broadly defined--art, politics, technology, religion, and so on--evolves in much the way biological species evolve: new cultural traits arise and may flourish or perish, and as a result whole institutions can belief systems form and change.

It is the study of how the human brain was designed—by natural selection—to mislead us, even enslave us.

various people had long had the feeling that gain through pain was nature's way

Men seem loath to concede the superiority of another human being, even in such trivial realms as municipal geography. The reason, perhaps, is that during human evolution males who too readily sought reconciliation after a fight, or otherwise needlessly submitted to others, saw their status drop, and with it their inclusive fitness.

we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better. This hypothesis was tossed out during the mid-1970s by both Richard Alexander and Robert Trivers.

free will is an illusion, brought to us by evolution. All the things we are commonly blamed or praised for—ranging from murder to theft to Darwin's eminently Victorian politeness—are the result not of choices made by some immaterial "I" but of physical necessity. "This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything," Darwin wrote in his notes. "[N]or ought one to blame others.

Natural selection is an inanimate process, devoid of consciousness, yet is a tireless refiner, an ingenious craftsman.