Evolutionary Biology Quotes

The body is merely an evolutionary vehicle for the gene

The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgeable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might–hope against hope–have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by hundreds of thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other field of knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even 'revolutionary' shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be 'refuted' by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus.

Daniel C. Dennett

If Charles Darwin reappeared today, he might be surprised to learn that humans are descended from viruses as well as from apes.

Robin A. Weiss

A century ago, people laughed at the notion that we were descended from monkeys. Today, the individuals most offended by that claim are the monkeys.

Jacob M. Appel

The red lipstick? It's supposed to signal fertility and readiness to mate. Just like the swollen red butt of a baboon. That tight-fitting little dress that shows off your curves? From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, big breasts represent a healthy mate who can feed a lot of offspring. That's why men are programmed to like big tits. When you show off your curves, what you're really doing is advertising to the whole world: "Look at me! I'm a healthy female! I'd be a perfect mate! Come mount me!

Oliver Markus

The textbook in question in the infamous Scope's Monkey Trial was partially written by the Harvard educated white supremacist, Charles B. Davenport.

A.E. Samaan

Neither humans nor the Gods that they have created are superior to old Mother Nature.

Abhijit Naskar

Good and evil are both within us. And when our primitive ancestors humanized these natural qualities of the mind, they got two completely opposite supernatural characters. One was the merciful lord almighty and the other was the wicked devil.

Abhijit Naskar

Things to know from books to read

Kip Koehler

We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication.

Jack Gilbert

Survive, survive and survive – these are the quintessential laws of Nature. But survive does not always mean being mean.

Abhijit Naskar

Faith is a natural evolutionary trait of the human mind, selected by Mother Nature as an internal coping-mechanism.

Abhijit Naskar

Homosexuality is nature’s way of keeping the population in check.

Abhijit Naskar

When Mother Nature speaks, even the Gods hold silence.

Abhijit Naskar

Diversity is Nature’s stronghold, yet that very diversity has become a curse for an entire species, which is supposedly the most advanced one on its planet.

Abhijit Naskar

I have every expectation that cancer will become known as the disease of human evolution trying and failing to adapt to a significantly changed environment.

Steven Magee

Mankind willfully changing the global electromagnetic radiation environment has created what I expect will become known as the man-made evolution era.

Steven Magee

Modify the environmental radiation and you will change the course of evolution.

Steven Magee

Fill the world with acid rain clouds and you will be in a new era of evolution, due to the changed electromagnetic frequencies emissions and light emissions from the lightning clouds. A new era of global environmental radiation!

Steven Magee

Homosexuality is neither a sin, nor an anomaly or a disease. It is an evolutionary variation.

Abhijit Naskar

The lessons of relationship that our primordial ancestors learned are deeply encoded in the genetics of our neurobiological circuits of love. They are present from the moment we are born and activated at puberty by the cocktail of neurochemicals. It’s an elegant synchronized system. At first our brain weighs a potential partner, and if the person ﬁts our ancestral wish list, we get a spike in the release of sex chemicals that makes us dizzy with a rush of unavoidable infatuation. It’s the ﬁrst step down the primeval path of pair-bonding.

Abhijit Naskar

Males of all species are made for wooing females, and females typically choose among their suitors. If you take a closer look, you can observe such behavior all around you. The beautiful bird chirping outside your window. It’s a mating call. That pretty little bird is trying to attract a potential mate, so that it can propagate its genes. Why does the peacock have such beautiful feathers? It is to attract a healthy female. He as well is trying to propagate his genes. Even we humans, are not much different from the rest of the animal kingdom when it comes to attracting potential mates. When women dress up for their night out at the club, they are doing so to look attractive. This is a subconscious evolutionary desire to attract as many potential mates as possible.... While women tend to grab attention with their looks, men on the other hand, tend to attract as many potential females as possible, by showing off their resources. When a man shows off with his fancy car, expensive gold watch and suit, or flexes his muscles and brags about how many credit cards he owns, he’s doing so to make himself desirable by healthy women, in order to propagate his genes. It is all in the pursuit of reproduction.

Abhijit Naskar

Nature programmed the neurobiological processes of early love to appear as something beyond the primitive sexual cravings of the genitals. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, it all leads to copulation and reproduction, but from the perspective of the individual who has recently fallen head over heels in love with someone, it is mostly about a sensation of warmth and delight, and rarely of sexual nature.

Abhijit Naskar

Love begins with the stage of subconscious primitive lust and attraction. I’m saying primitive because at this very early stage there is really no difference between primitive man and modern man.

Abhijit Naskar

We live in an exciting time. We now know more than ever about our biology and about our history, allowing us to peer into the future with greater clarity than has previously been possible. But at the same time, the changes we are undergoing, brought about by our own advances in technology, medicine, transportation-- and by the growing impact we are having on the world around us-- mean that we live in a time in which the future looks increasingly less like the past. We have become an odd species, indeed, but our story is not yet over. Like all species, Homo sapiens continues to evolve, so there is one thing we can say with certainty: the people of tomorrow will not be the same as the people of today.

Scott Solomon

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

After the dinosaurs, it is us the humans that have become the dominant species on planet earth. However, unlike the dinosaurs, we have become the rulers of this planet not by ferociousness, but by intelligence, even though we are no less ferociousness than them.

Abhijit Naskar

It takes not a few centuries, or even millenniums, but millions of years for a subtle evolutionary change to become noticeable.

Abhijit Naskar

Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fundamental chemistry they are rather uniform, and, in particular, the replicators that they bear, the genes, are basically the same kind of molecule in all of us—from bacteria to elephants. We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator—molecules called DNA— but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water; there is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways.

Richard Dawkins

Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation.

Richard Dawkins

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

Richard Dawkins

Scott Solomon

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

Abhijit Naskar

It takes not a few centuries, or even millenniums, but millions of years for a subtle evolutionary change to become noticeable.

Abhijit Naskar

Richard Dawkins

Nature deemed God worthy and hence chose it as her slave to serve the humans appearing as the master.

Abhijit Naskar

Evolutionary Biology Quotes

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