Quotes from Sean B. Carroll

Evolution of form is very much a matter of teaching very old genes new tricks!

Let us listen to the lesson of Martin Luther King, who wrote: "The movement does not seek to liberate blacks at the price of the humiliation of the whites. It wants to liberate American society and to help all people to liberate themselves.

What a tragic irony, that the more we understand of biology, the less we have of it to learn from and enjoy. What will be the legacy of this new century - to cherish and to protect Nature or to see butterflies and zebras and much more vanish into legend like the thylacine, moa and dodo?

Behe named this inability to explain the creation of new taxa through genetics "Darwin's black box". When the box is opened, he expects evidence of the Deity to be found. However, inside Darwin's black box resides merely another type of genetics--developmental genetics

As delightful as the Just So explanations are of how spots, stripes, humps and horns came to be, biology can now tell us stories about butterflies, zebras and leopards that I contend are every bit as enchanting as Kipling's fairy tales. What's more, they offer some simple, elegant truths that deepen our understanding of all animal forms, including ourselves.

But in just the past hundred years or so, we have turned the tables and taken control of biology. Smallpox, a virus that killed as many as 300 million people in the first part of the twentieth century (far more than in all wars combined) has not merely been tamed but has been eradicated from the planet.

Darwin's great advantage over Paley and other thinkers of his generation was his grasp of the immensity of time. His

California State University Professor Mike Orkin points out that if a person drives ten miles to buy a ticket, he or she is about sixteen times more likely to get killed in a car crash on the way than to win the jackpot. Wait a minute, you say; that may be for one ticket, but they're buying a lot of tickets—surely, that improves the odds. It does, but Orkin notes that a person who buys fifty tickets a week will win the jackpot on average about once every 30,000 years.

I believe that the teaching of evolution and science is best served by promoting the scientific method and scientific knowledge and not by attacking religious views. The latter is a futile, counterproductive batte. However, I also believe, as many denominations have also concluded, that religion is better served by promoting and evolving its respective teachings and theologies, and not by attacking science, which is definitely a losing strategy

Evo Devo has not just provided a critical missing piece of the Modern Synthesis - embryology - and integrated it with molecular genetics and traditional elements such as paleontology. The wholly unexpected nature of some of its key discoveries and the unprecedented quality and depth of evidence it has provided toward settling previously unresolved questions bestow it with a revolutionary character.

Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too. —HENRIK IBSEN (1828–1906), The Master Builder

ALL GREAT DEEDS AND ALL GREAT THOUGHTS HAVE A RIDICULOUS BEGINNING. —ALBERT CAMUS, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS