In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
George WaldRead
Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the concept of death as a recent development in the evolutionary process.
George Wald suggests that death is not an inherent part of life but rather a relatively recent aspect of evolution. He implies that for much of the evolutionary history, life may have existed in forms that did not have the same relationship with mortality, prompting reflection on the nature of life and death in the grand scheme of evolution.
Themes
DeathEvolutionLifeMortalityPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the nature of life in a biology class.
More from George Wald
All quotes βI have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule; and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel like a big molecule!
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Our challenge is to give what account we can of what becomes of life in the solar system, this corner of the universe that is our home; and, most of all, what becomes of men-all men, of all nations, colors, and creeds. This has become one world, a world for all men. It is only such a world that can now offer us life, and the chance to go on.
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Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
George WaldRead
Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
George WaldRead
I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.
George WaldRead
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