Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
Charles DarwinRead
On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”
Interpretation
What this quote means
Darwin suggests that the existence of marsupials and placental mammals may imply a complex design in nature.
In this quote, Charles Darwin reflects on the diversity of life he observed, particularly the differences between marsupials and placental mammals in Australia. He implies that such distinct forms of reproductive biology might lead one to believe in multiple creators rather than a single evolutionary process, highlighting the complexity and wonders of natural selection and adaptation.
Themes
DarwinMarsupialsCreatorsNatureEvolution
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on evolutionary biology, I would quote Darwin to illustrate the complexity of life.
More from Charles Darwin
All quotes →The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
Charles DarwinRead
I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science....It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] & holes as sound parts.
Charles DarwinRead
We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.
Charles DarwinRead
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
Charles DarwinRead
we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps
Charles DarwinRead
Similar quotes
To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.
Francis CrickRead
My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.
John B. S. HaldaneRead
In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of 'The Selfish Gene,' I did actually use the metaphor of a 'virus.' So when anybody talks about something going viral on the Internet, that is exactly what a meme is, and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that.
Richard DawkinsRead
Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.
StendhalRead
There is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying, 'I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet, because this gave me insight. Let's go test that prediction,' and have the prediction be correct.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
Garrett HardinRead