Quotes About Adaptation

Somewhere in the steaming jungles of the Carboniferous Period there emerged an organism that for the first time in the history of the world had more information in its brains than in its genes. It was an early reptile which, were we to come upon it in these sophisticated times, we would probably not describe as exceptionally intelligent… Much of the history of life since the Carboniferous Period can be described as the gradual (and certainly incomplete) dominance of brains over genes.

It is precisely our plasticity, our long childhood, that prevents a slavish adherence to genetically preprogrammed behavior in human beings more than in any other species… Some substantial adjustment of the relative role of each component of the triune brain is well within our powers.

In a world in transition, students and teachers both need to teach themselves one essential skill - learning how to learn.

As the pioneering physicist Benjamin Franklin put it, "In going on with these experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves obliged to destroy?

Perhaps if one less dragonfly had drowned in the Carboniferous swamps, the intelligent organisms on our planet today would have feathers and teach their young in rookeries. The pattern of evolutionary causality is a web of astonishing complexity; the incompleteness of our understanding humbles us.

Those mothers with hereditary large pelvises were able to bear large-brained babies who because of their superior intelligence were able to compete successfully in adulthood with the smaller-brained offspring of mothers with smaller pelvises.

The book was better than the movie. For one thing, there was a lot more in it. And some of the pictures were awfully different from the movie.

Those who avoid decapitation leave more offspring.

Tides of people will continue to ebb and flow across the planet. But the lands we run to now have already been settled. Other people, often unsympathetic to our plight, are there before us.

Somos el producto de cinco mil millones de años de evolución biológica lenta, fortuita, y no hay razón alguna para pensar en que se haya detenido tal proceso evolutivo. El hombre es un animal en período de transición. No es el clímax de una creación.

The sleeping style of each organism is exquisitely adapted to the ecology of the animal. It is conceivable that animals who are too stupid to be quiet on their own initiative are, during periods of high risk, immobilized by the implacable arm of sleep.

In addition, science is a delight; evolution has arranged that we take pleasure in understanding - those who understand are more likely to survive.

Our difficulties in understanding or effectuating communication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world.

La extinción es la regla. La supervivencia es la excepción.

The entire evolutionary record on our planet, particularly the record contained in fossil endocasts, illustrates a progressive tendency toward intelligence. There is nothing mysterious about this: smart organisms by and large survive better and leave more offspring than stupid ones.

Taken together, the dramatic societal shifts – often in ten generations or less – provide a compelling refutation of the claim that we are condemned, without hope of reprieve, to live out our lives in a barely disguised chimpanzee social order.

Why, you're not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it — develop charm — and vivacity — and — charm!

Sometimes a man has got to hock his sweet used-to-be in order to finance his present situation...

Sometimes we sleep too long in the afternoon and when we wake we find things changed, Signora.

Well, they say nature hates a vacuum. - That's what they say, but sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed.

The monkey body has carried us to this moment of release, but we are coming more and more to exist in a world made by the human imagination.

Be a dear and fetch a needle and some thread." Tucking one wayward breast back into her drooping bodice, Lottie muttered, "I don't think this is quite what Laura had in mind when she said my coming out would be the talk of the ton.

If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer / A nail, you ain't thought of the nail correctly.