Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century.

In Galapagos, as elsewhere, things of the mind, including intellectual ramifications from evolutionary theory, and things of the spirit, like the feeling one gets from a Queen Anne’s lace of stars in the moonless Galapagean...

Molecular biology has routinely taken problematic things under its wing without altering core ideas.

The evolution of higher and of lower forms of life is as well and as soundly established as the eternal hills. It has long since ceased to be a theory; it is a law of...

[When asked by a student if he believes in any gods]Oh, no. Absolutely not… The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don’t have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to...

Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.

Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course.

Some people with Tourette’s have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects….. (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage...

Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design – as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does – because it misses some...

A recognized fact which goes back to the earliest times is that every living organism is not the sum of a multitude of unitary processes, but is, by virtue of interrelationships and of higher and...

The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence....

Il nous faut partir d’une conception d’ensemble de l’organisme en tant qu’une entité fondamentale de la biologie, puis comprendre comment celui-ci se divise en parties qui respectent son ordre intrinsèque – pour donner un organisme...

A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die – which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.

For who could better describe the eye than God, Who made it? But as it is clearer than the day that God has left a good deal to our own efforts … we should really...

The funny thing is if in England, you ask a man in the street who the greatest living Darwinian is, he will say Richard Dawkins. And indeed, Dawkins has done a marvelous job of popularizing...

Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?

It is not always the magnitude of the differences observed between species that must determine specific distinctions, but the constant preservation of those differences in reproduction.

We should not be too quick to dismiss our own [ocular] arrangement. As so often in biology, the situation is more complex…..we have the advantage that our own light-sensitive cells are embedded directly in their...

All of today’s DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.

Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria’s effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied...

If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will,...

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when...

In a sense, the Earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of the concrete all...

Not untill all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son. But in a totalitarian future that has removed procreation from woman’s hands, there will also be no affect...

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there’s nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

The more closely two organisms depend upon each other the harder it becomes to tell where one organism ends and the other begins.

The embryological record is almost always abbreviated in accordance with the tendency of nature (to be explained on the principle of survival of the fittest) to attain her needs by the easiest means.

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark...

…because the great beauty of embryo development, the bit that human beings find so hard to grasp, is that it is a totally decentralised process…no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can...

The secret of DNA’s success is that it carries information like that of a computer program, but far more advanced. Since experience shows that intelligence is the only presently acting cause of information, we can...

The male frog, in mating season,” said Crake, “makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog,...

I am absolutely convinced of the lack of true scientific evidence in favour of Darwinian dogma. Nobody in the biological sciences, medicine included, needs Darwinism at all. Darwinism is certainly needed, however, in order to...

E intelligent design people! They’re just buck-toothed, Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who’re trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They...

I think that in the 21st century, medical biology will advance at a more rapid pace than before.

Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature’s production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in...

Hierarchical organization in biological systems thus is characterized by an exquisite array of delicately and intricately interlocked order, steadily increasing in level and complexity and thereby giving rise neogenetically to emergent properties.

It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably...

I am perhaps more proud of having helped to redeem the character of the cave-man than of any other single achievement of mine in the field of anthropology.

Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be...

…if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that,...

Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed:It is safe, and you can’t get safer than safe.

Life is physics, not chemistry or biology.

The Everglades was the only place on earth where alligators (broad snout, fresh water, darker skin) and crocodiles (pointy snout, salt water, toothy grin) lived side by side. It was the only home of the...

The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other...

I may finally call attention to the probability that the association of paternal and maternal chromosomes in pairs and their subsequent separation during the reducing division as indicated above may constitute the physical basis of...

The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely...

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears...

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

In order to approximate those shapes and attitudes which are considered normal and desirable, both sexes deform themselves, justifying the process by referring to the primary, genetic difference between the sexes. But of forty-eight chromosomes...