For me, the level at which natural selection causes the phenomenon of adaptation is the level of the replicator - the gene.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that genetic material is the fundamental unit that drives evolution and adaptation through natural selection.
Richard Dawkins emphasizes the importance of genes as the core entities responsible for the process of natural selection and adaptation. By referring to the gene as the 'replicator,' he highlights that it is not just the organisms themselves that evolve, but it is the genes that are passed down and modified over generations that shape the characteristics of life forms through evolutionary processes.
In practice
In a science lecture discussing evolutionary biology, this quote can highlight the role of genes in natural selection.
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.
Every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008...Thatβs why, over the past six years, weβve done more than ever before to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy, to the way we use it.
Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.
More stars in the north are seen not to set, while in the south certain stars are no longer seen to rise.
There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.
In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.
I took biology in high school and didn't like it at all. It was focused on memorization. ... I didn't appreciate that biology also had principles and logic ... [rather than dealing with a] messy thing called life. It just wasn't organized, and I wanted to stick with the nice pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense. I wish I had learned sooner that biology could be fun as well.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.