Ernst Mayr Quotes
Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts
Indeed, I was unable to find any evidence whatsoever of the occurrence of a drastic evolutionary acceleration and genetic reconstruction in widespread, populous species.
I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.
The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.
Evolution as such is no longer a theory for a modern author. It is as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun.
most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.
A species is a reproductive community of populations reproductively isolated from others that occupies a specific niche in nature.
According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another.
The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations.
On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity.
Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.
Definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows.
It is curious how often erroneous theories have had a beneficial effect for particular branches of science.
Living in an entirely different physical as well as biotic environment, such a population would have unique opportunities to enter new niches and to select novel adaptive pathways.
Isolating mechanisms are biological properties of individuals that prevent the interbreeding of populations that are actually or potentially sympatric.
New gene pools are generated in every generation, and evolution takes place because the successful individuals produced by these gene pools give rise to the next generation.
To take an unequivocal stand, it seems to me, is of greater heuristic value and far more likely to stimulate constructive criticism than to evade the issue.
It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon.
In neither his definition nor the examples illustrating what memes are does Dawkins mention anything that would distinguish memes from concepts.