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
Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.
Jacob BronowskiRead
In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as they arise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory; and its principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions of every well established branch of human knowledge.
Alfred Russel WallaceRead
The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.
Louis AgassizRead
The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence - and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.
Carl David AndersonRead
If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet.
Lawrence M. KraussRead
In any finite region of space, matter can only arrange itself in a finite number of configurations, just as a deck of cards can be arranged in only finitely many different orders. If you shuffle the deck infinitely many times, the card orderings must necessarily repeat.
Brian GreeneRead