Quotes About Adaptation

Every jump of technical progress leaves the relative intellectual development of the masses a step behind, and thus causes a fall in the political-maturity thermometer. It takes sometimes tens of years, sometimes generations, for a people's level of understanding gradually to adapt itself to the changed state of affairs, until it has recovered the same capacity for self-government as it had already possessed at a lower stage of civilization.

There is, for example, the hoary problem why the skin on the soles of our feet is so much thicker than elsewhere. If the thickening occurred after birth as a result of stress, wear and tear, there would be no problem. But the skin of the sole is already thickened in the embryo which has never walked, bare-foot or otherwise.

Why, if evolution were a free for all, restrained only by selection for fitness, why did Australia not produce some of the bug-eyed monsters of science fiction? The only moderately unorthodox creation of that isolated island in a hundred million years are the kangaroos and wallabies; the rest of its fauna consists of rather poor replicas of more efficient placental types-vatiations on a limited number of archetypal themes.

In fact, the animal does not merely adapt to the environment, but constantly adapts the environment to itself. It eats environment, drinks environment, fights and mates environment, burrows and builds in the environment; and even in observing environment, it modifies, dismantles, analyses, and reassembles it after its own fashion, converting 'noise' into 'information'. 'Perception', Woodworth wrote, 'is always driven by a direct, inherent motive which might be called the will to perceive.

The exercise of a skill is always under the dual control (a) of a fixed code of rules (which may be innate or acquired by learning) and (b) of a flexible strategy, guided by environmental pointers- the lie of the land.

Now microbes seem to have an enormous mutation rate (or some other method of hereditary adaptation), for, within a few years, they have evolved new drug-resistant strains. We humans cannot perform such evolutionary feats. But we can simulate major adaptive mutations by adding iodine to the drinking water, or by putting drops into the eyes of the newborn, to protect them from enemies against which our natural defences are inadequate.

She could reach up to the table and take a cookie or a spoon. She could stand at the window and look outside. She could do a lot of things now which she could not do when she was a little baby.

Well, dear, life is a casting off. It's always that way.

The schoolmen peer with dulled eyes from amid the heap of precedents and prescriptions about them, and, distracted by seeing a thing sanctioned neither by precedent nor by prescription, dub the man realist, and rail against him for that his work fits none of their pigeon-holes.

the orange circle faded to a coiled spring of dully glowing grey.

He might say he had made a mistake in moving to this foreign city—it had seemed like a good idea in California, but now where else could he go?

There was probably a range of people she had never experienced in this world and for which she had no preparation

Things might have been a lot worse. Don't you worry about it overmuch. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.

Things might have been a lot worse. Don't you worry about it overmuch. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time. Worrying never made a sailor.

Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.

Every society requires mutual accommodation and mutually agreeable temper; hence the larger it is, the duller.

En la vida pasa como con el ajedrez: en ambos trazamos, ciertamente, un plan, pero este queda total y completamente subordinado por aquello que, en el ajedrez, se le antoja hacer a nuestro adversario y, en la vida, al destino. La mayoría de las veces, las modificaciones resultantes son tan significativas que nuestro plan, cuando llega a realizarse, apenas queda reconocible en algunos rasgos básicos.

Orice animal de prada ajunge mormintul viu a inca o mie de alti pradatori si nu rezista in timp decit cu pretul unui lung sir de martirii. Inteligenta mareste capacitatea de a suferii, atingind la om gradul cel mai inalt.

Uma hipótese leva, na cabeça em que se estabeleceu ou mesmo na cabeça em que nasceu, uma vida comparável à de um organismo, já que assimila do mundo exterior apenas o que lhe é proveitoso e homogêneo. Quanto ao que é heterogêneo e prejudicial, ou ela não deixa que chegue perto, ou então, quando se trata de algo que é inevitável assimilar, expele-o novamente, intacto.

Even trees must be shaken by the wind, if they are to thrive.

Para conducir al hombre a un estado mejor, no bastaría con ponerle en un mundo mejor, sino que seria preciso de toda necesidad transformarle totalmente, hacer de modo que no sea lo que es y que llegara a ser lo que no es.

If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If

I soon learned that Dandakaranya, the forest I was about to enter, was full of people who had many names and fluid identities. It was like balm to me, that idea. How lovely not to be stuck with yourself, to become someone else for a while.