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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Evolution is driven by natural selection rather than predetermined design, highlighting our development through adaptation and selection.
George Wald's quote emphasizes that evolution occurs not from a premeditated design but rather through the process of natural selection, where organisms that adapt best to their environments are favored. This concept underscores the idea that we are shaped by the outcomes of various choices and circumstances rather than being crafted with a specific plan in mind, illustrating the randomness and complexity of life's development.
Themes
EvolutionNatural SelectionAdaptationSelectionDesign
In practice
Example use cases
In a biology class discussing the principles of evolution.
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!
George WaldRead
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.
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
Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.
George WaldRead
Similar quotes
I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?
Buzz AldrinRead
Every mode of transport that we use - whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses - is reusable, but not rockets. So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.
Elon MuskRead
If we find life out there, and it's not us, we will deem it not intelligent. But what may be equally as likely is that we find life that's vastly more intelligent than we are. If that's the case, we are putty in their hands.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
My experiments proved that the radiation of uranium compounds can be measured with precision under determined conditions and that this radiation is an atomic property of the element of uranium.
Marie CurieRead
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism... We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
Richard LewontinRead
Darwin's theory of evolution is a framework by which we understand the diversity of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' that you apply and say, 'What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years?' Biology isn't there yet with that kind of predictive precision.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead