Quotes About Selection

The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation.

For example, if (as Dawkins argues) deceit is fundamental in animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray—by the subtle signs of self-knowledge—the deception being practiced.

Darwinism is not a theory of random chance. It is a theory of random mutation plus non-random cumulative natural selection. Why, I wonder, is it so hard for even sophisticated scientists to grasp this simple point?

although evolution may seem, in some vague sense, a 'good thing', especially since we are the product of it, nothing actually 'wants' to evolve. Evolution

It is a strange fact, incidentally, that religious apologists love the anthropic principle. For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case. Precisely the opposite is true. The anthropic principle, like natural selection, is an alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence.

natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being.

Natural selection is a strong enough theory to be predictive in this fashion, now that science no longer needs convincing of its truth.

A replicator may be said to 'benefit' from anything that increases the number of its descendant ('germ-line') copies.

We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection – the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact.

Natural selection is an improbability pump: a process that generates the statistically improbable. It systematically seizes the minority of random changes that have what it takes to survive, and accumulates them, step by tiny step over unimaginable timescales, until evolution eventually climbs mountains of improbability and diversity, peaks whose height and range seem to know no limit, the metaphorical mountain that I have called 'Mount Improbable'.

evolution is blind to the future

One gene may be regarded as a unit that survives through a large number of successive individual bodies.

The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition.

In terms of the analogy, suppose an ideally balanced crew would consist of four right-handers and four left-handers. Once again assume that the coach, unaware of this fact, selects blindly on 'merit'. Now if the pool of candidates happens to be dominated by right-handers, any individual left-hander will tend to be at an advantage: he is likely to cause any boat in which he finds himself to win, and he will therefore appear to be a good oarsman.

A gene is not indivisible, but it is seldom divided. It is either definitely present or definitely absent in the body of any given individual. A gene travels intact from grandparent to grandchild, passing straight through the intermediate generation without being merged with other genes. If genes continually blended with each other, natural selection as we now understand it would be impossible.

They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

Far from pointing to a designer, the illusion of design in the living world is explained with far greater economy and with devastating elegance by Darwinian natural selection

Replicator selection is the process by which some replicators survive at the expense of other replicators. Vehicle selection is the process by which some vehicles are more successful than other vehicles in ensuring the survival of their replicators

The controversy about group selection versus individual selection is a controversy about the rival claims of two suggested kinds of vehicle.

The controversy about gene selection versus individual (or group) selection is a controversy about whether, when we talk about a unit of selection, we ought to mean a vehicle at all, or a replicator.

algorithm of natural selection has generated a machine capable of internalizing the algorithm, setting up a model of itself – and much more – in microcosm inside the human skull.

Evolution is the process by which some genes become more numerous and others less numerous in the gene pool.

The whole purpose of our search for a 'unit of selection' is to discover a suitable actor to play the leading role in our metaphors of purpose.