We do not draw conclusions with our eyes, but with our reasoning powers, and if the whole of the rest of living nature proclaims with one accord from all sides the evolution of the world of organisms, we cannot assume that the process stopped short of Man. But it follows also that the factors which brought about the development of Man from his Simian ancestry must be the same as those which have brought about the whole of evolution.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that human evolution is part of the broader process of evolution observed in nature and relies on our reasoning to understand it.
August Weismann's quote reflects the idea that human beings are not separate from the evolutionary processes that shape all living organisms. He argues that just as nature evolves and adapts, so too did humans emerge from a long line of ancestors, influenced by the same evolutionary factors as all other life forms. Weismann highlights the importance of reasoning in our understanding of these concepts, suggesting that conclusions about our origins require thoughtful analysis rather than mere observation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about evolutionary biology to highlight the connection between humans and other species.
What a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects themselves.
Ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.
I am not very sceptical, — a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable .
The real value of science is in the getting, and those who have tasted the pleasure of discovery alone know what science is. A problem solved is dead. A world without problems to be solved would be devoid of science.
It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.
The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has.
If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.