The very large brain that humans have, plus the things that go along with it - language, art, science - seemed to have evolved only once. The eye, by contrast, independently evolved 40 times. So, if you were to 'replay' evolution, the eye would almost certainly appear again, whereas the big brain probably wouldn't.
Interpretation
Human intelligence and its related skills have a unique evolutionary origin, unlike the eye, which has evolved multiple times in different species.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins highlights the uniqueness of human cognitive development, particularly our large brains and the associated capabilities like language, art, and science, suggesting that such advanced traits have a singular evolutionary path. In contrast, the eye's ability to evolve independently numerous times across different species demonstrates how certain biological traits can emerge repeatedly in evolution, suggesting a likelihood of recurrence under similar conditions.
In practice
In a lecture about evolution, this quote illustrates the uniqueness of human cognitive traits.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
We should begin at the very root from which we spring, we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.
Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you're holding on to your known existence with one hand. That's the thing.
Freedom is the oxygen without which science cannot breathe.
The universe is a symphony of strings, and the mind of God that Einstein eloquently wrote about for thirty years would be cosmic music resonating through eleven-dimensional hyper space.
In fourth grade, I was interested in all areas of science. I particularly loved learning about how the earth was created.
The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.
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