Among the things most characteristic of organisms–most distinctive of living as opposed to inorganic systems–is a sort of directedness. Their structures and activities have an adaptedness, an evident and vital usefulness to the organism. Darwin’s...

For him the tragedy of Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most.

The phrase ‘the fossil record’ sounds impressive and authoritative. As used by some persons it becomes, as intended, intimidating, taking on the aura of esoteric truth as expounded by an elite class of specialists. But...

No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way… To take...

It was in the attempt to ascertain the interrelationships between species that experiments n genetics were first made. The words “evolution” and “origin of species” are now so intimately associated with the name of Darwin...

The publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the ‘Origin’ in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has...

Thomas Wollaston, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, complained that Darwin did no seem to know what a species actually was. The British Quarterly, deliberately sitting up trouble, speculated that a time might...

One of the truly bizarre things about our current cultural situation is that the leading figures of the scientific establishment seem genuinely amazed that the citizens do not accept finch-beak variation as proof of the...

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been...

Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn’t stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself...

Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism… neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds...

Why should I have to hide the fact that I don’t believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn’t mean you treat people...

Darwinism is dynamic. It is about change, not stasis; about process, not pattern; about tales, not tableaux; about becoming, not being.

Of the contributions made during the essayist period three call for notice: Weismann deserves mention for his useful work in asking for the proof that “acquired characters” or, to speak more precisely, parental experience can...

I published that theory [of speciational evolution] in a 1954 paper…and I clearly related it to paleontology. Darwin argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others… I noted...

Who gave the decisive deathblow to the argument from design on the basis of biological complexity? Both philosophers and biologists are divided on this point (Oppy 1996; Dawkins 1986; Sober 2008). Some have claimed that...

The ideology and philosophy of neo-Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems.

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of...

When in 1863 Thomas Huxley coined the phrase ‘Man’s Place in Nature,’ it was to name a short collection of his essays applying to man Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Origin of Species had been...

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to...

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...

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

Living organisms were not independently created, but have descended and diversified over time from common ancestors. And thus, no other biological theory so elegantly explains this. Evolutionary theory has withstood the test of time—by way...

Darwin was a biological evolutionist, because he was first a uniformitarian geologist. Biology is pre-eminent to-day among the natural sciences, because its younger sister, Geology, gave it the means.

Satan is behind the theory of evolution. Satan hates God and us. Satan is the father of all lies. So he wants nothing more than to make every human being alive believe lies about God,...

Darwin’s theory was received in Russia with profound sympathy. While in Western Europe it met firmly established old traditions which it had first to overcome, in Russia its appearance coincided with the awakening of our...

The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish...

Darwinian evolution has obviously not had enough time to work.

I am above the forest region, amongst grand rocks & such a torrent as you see in Salvator Rosa’s paintings vegetation all a scrub of rhodos. with Pines below me as thick & bad to...

This century will be called Darwin’s century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write...

{On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon}He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss...

The standard cosmological theory–an expanding universe–does not really solve the problem of God. It simply makes it more problematical. Once the creator-creation model is discarded as primitive mythology, we still have not touched the ancient...

The starting point of Darwin’s theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary,...

The ‘Manifesto’ being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of...

As a rule, theologians know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched by fear.It is...

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree.I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and...

The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in...

I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book [The Origin of Species] than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.[Letter to Charles Darwin 12 Dec 1859]

In consequence of Darwin’s reformed Theory of Descent, we are now in a position to establish scientifically the groundwork of a non-miraculous history of the development of the human race. … If any person feels...

A century ago, people laughed at the notion that we were descended from monkeys. Today, the individuals most offended by that claim are the monkeys.

Stephen Hawking said that his quest is simply “trying to understand the mind of God”.

Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made...

Readers of Darwin’s life, for instance, and particularly of the published correspondence of Darwin, are henceforth naturalists in the making. Ever afterwards they are Darwins on a small scale, seeing animals and plants in an...

That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been...

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.{The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was not originated by Charles Darwin, though he discussed Spencer’s ‘excellent expression’ in a letter to Alfred Russel Wallace (Jul...

Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

I was aware of Darwin’s views fourteen years before I adopted them and I have done so solely and entirely from an independent study of the plants themselves.[Letter to W.H. Harvey]