Quotes About Adaptation

As Einstein so eloquently put it, We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. So

As James Lovelock notes . . . No one doubts that humans are in thermostasis, yet our core temperatures range from 35 to 40°C and our extremities from 5 to 45°C. This may appear imprecise, but it serves us well.9

Darwin had two genuinely deep insights that are paradigm altering: 1) that the root of the plant is in fact its brain; and 2) that the plant is using sensitive, and intelligent, analysis of it surroundings to navigate through the soil.

There is an embedded assumption in evolutionary theory that the human race came from some prehuman source and through natural selection is heading someplace incredible, some peak of evolution that is our ultimate destination. This belief naturally engenders the perspective that the human achievements of the past were all right for our ancestors, but in the here-and-now are obviously primitive and hopelessly old-fashioned.

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

for bacteria do not develop resistance to plant medicines. They can't. For plants have been dealing with bacteria a great deal longer than the human species has even existed, some 700 million years.

Once environmental inputs are perceived, all organisms possess specific capacities for processing those informational inputs. Every one of them can determine the nature of the incoming information, its potential impact on the individual organism's health, and can decide what to do in response. They have to be able to do this in order to survive.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.

Yes, you absolutely should change what you can change, but you also need to accept what you cannot change. Out of acceptance will come detachment. This will enable you to enjoy the positive aspects of life without being distraction by the negative. Why waste energy focusing on things from the past when you can move on and put those things behind you?

Well, then we shall live by the cottontails and porcupines. We know how. There are many more of those than they or their wagsi can catch or starve. They can get rid of us only if they destroy our homes, fill up our springs, and fence the earth against our return. The earth will always have a way to care for us.

In the animal kingdom, the predators are easy to spot. They all have their eyes in the front of their heads to facilitate an attack. Lions, tigers, and wolves are designed by nature to kill. Antelopes, deer, and rabbit all have their eyes on the side of their heads. These prey animals are designed for flight and their vision allows them to see things coming at them peripherally. In the wild there are no exceptions to this rule. With people, it was a lot harder to tell.

Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda," meaning "the church reformed, always reforming.

Nature is what she is - amoral and persistent.

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher answer'– but none exists

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

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 the tests fail (as they usually do).

Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die.

I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important flexibility of our primate forebears, while most mammals had sacrificed it in specializing their digits. Carnivores run, stab, and scratch. My cat may manipulate me psychologically, but he'll never type or play the piano.

We live, if we still do live, in a Sea of Chaos, out of which any fucking monster can evolve.

human evolution has been determined mainly by social competition.29

there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.

Imagine loving an animal for over a year and then one morning you get up and put it into a crate and drive it to the airport and send it to the guide dog school.

He had been around politicians for a long time, and he was prepared for some outburst.