Quotes About Darwinian

The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture (though maybe not in the United States Bible Belt, nor in parts of the Islamic world). Most people are at ease with the idea that our present biosphere is the outcome of four billion years of Darwinian evolution.

The Victorian system used Darwinian techniques to create killers adapted to their prey, which was elegant and effective but led to the creation of killers that were simply too bizarre to have been thought up by humans, just as humans designing a world never would have thought up the naked mole rat.

pro scienta atque sapienta-Latin- for science and wisdom It's a Darwinian popularity contest. at all times, the question on everyone's mind is, who's coolest? Do you want the Spanish Inquisition in here? you better start acting with a little sobriety, or your mother is going to put two and two together

We have the ability to completely change our environment to go... to take on... to inherit, in a certain sense, things far beyond our DNA, and that's inheritable. And we can see evolution in action as our ideas evolve and undergo a kind of Darwinian selection not at the DNA level. And we can go off into space.

Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes.

The interesting question would be whether there's a Darwinian process, a kind of selection process whereby some memes are more likely to spread than others, because people like them, because they're popular, because they're catchy or whatever it might be.

Engels's view of evolution was Lamarckian, rather than strictly Darwinian, in that he believed that characteristics acquired by individuals could be inherited by later generations.

NASA 'working definition' of life, for example: life is 'a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution'.

Darwinian biologists must keep repeating that reminder to themselves because otherwise they might become conscious of the reality that is staring them in the face and trying to get their attention."7

IN THE DARWINIAN world of American high school culture, I had learned only one lesson: The lights of love and pity often died early, and many friendships were based on necessity and emotional dependency and nothing else.

The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelligible in a Darwinian world.

What if the purpose of human charity wasn't to protect the weak -- which seems pretty anti-Darwinian anyway -- but to preserve the mad? Don't they get special treatment in most primitive societies? ( . . .) You have to be careful about who you do away with. It could be that some part of our understanding comes in vessels incapable of sustaining themselves. What do you think? Maybe you'd have to be crazy to think that.

Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts.

As a chemist, I wanted to ask myself the question frustrated by biology: What is the minimal unit of matter that can undergo Darwinian evolution?

Our physiological constitution is obviously a product of Darwinian processes, insofar as you buy the evolutional theory as a generative, as an account of the mechanism that generated us. Our physiology evolved, our behaviors evolved, and our accounts of those behaviors, both successful and unsuccessful, evolved.

To be labeled a 'science-denier' in 2017 often just means you've upset someone who insists on teaching strict, Darwinian orthodoxy in schools or who advocates particular climate legislation or who supports ethically fraught research on embryos.

Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.

Human intellect has always evolved by rejecting outdated information in favor of new truths... In Darwinian terms, a religion that ignores scientific facts and refuses to change its beliefs is like a fish stranded in a slowly drying pond refusing to flip into deeper water because it doesn't want to believe its world has changed.

Human intellect has always evolved by rejecting outdated information in favor of new truths. This is how the species has evolved. In Darwinian terms, a religion that ignores scientific facts and refuses to change its beliefs is like a fish stranded in a slowly drying pond and refusing to flip to deeper water because it doesn't want to believe its world has changed.

If an investor pursued an exclusive strategy of day trading stock index futures, investment results for the portfolio would have nothing to do with asset allocation or security selection and everything to do with market timing. The lack of widespread frenetic trading by investors stems either from a general sensibility of the investing populace or from a Darwinian winnowing of the day traders' ranks.

A Darwinian left, understanding the prerequisites for mutual cooperation as well as its benefits, would strive to avoid economic conditions that create outcasts.

It's not being angry that's important, it's being angry about the right things. I told her, Look at it from the Darwinian perspective. Anger is to make you effective. That's its survival function. That's why it's given to you. If it makes you ineffective, drop it like a hot potato.

Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn't quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset.

There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations [Article : "In the Details . . . What?"]