Quotes · Skopia

8 quotes

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Topic·Natural selection✕clear

Scientific literature

It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Richard Dawkins

1986

★ 2.0

Interview · Newspaper

Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations.

Richard Dawkins

2006

★ 2.0

Scientific literature

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Richard Dawkins

1986

★ 3.5

Scientific literature

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

On the Origin of Species · 1859

★ 3.9

Scientific literature

From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

On the Origin of Species · 1859

★ 3.9

Scientific literature

The shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.

On the Origin of Species · 1859

★ 4.9

Scientific literature

Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving.

On the Origin of Species · 1859

★ 5.5

Scientific literature

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

On the Origin of the Species · 1859

★ 7.9