Isaac Asimov Quotes
Intelligence is a valuable thing, but it is not usually the key to survival. Sheer fecundity ... usually counts. The intelligent gorilla doesn't do as well as the less intelligent but more-fecund rat, which doesn't do as well as the still-less-intelligent but still-more-fecund cockroach, which doesn't do as well as the minimally-intelligent but maximally-fecund bacterium.
Asimov, Isaac. The Roving Mind. Prometheus Books, 1983.
Even today many people find Darwin’s views wanting because of the struggle and survival of the fittest concept implying that all creatures physically battle for survival and existance. But as this quotation illustrated, this was and is a very narrow view of Darwin’s concept of the struggle. Creatures fighting with each other is only a small part of this struggle. Larger parts are adapting to changed climate, versatility in food selection and extremely important a successful breeding pattern. The Thompson’s Gazelle is the most eaten animal on the African plains, and has virtually no defenses, but is an amazing breeder, with the shortest period of gestation of any mammal and the number of pregnancies per year. This little antelopes are thriving while they are eaten by most predators while the Lion, the strongest predator whom no animal will threaten, is becoming extinct.
Darwin believed at the time that large populations were critical to national success and development. The next 100 years would prove that large population was a handicap to progress and real growth of standard of living.
Charles Darwin did not develop an interest in the origin of life in a vacuum. His grandfather and many other scientists and naturalists had realized that species evolved and improved over time and generations. What Charles Darwin added was the principles of the mechanism of how it all worked.
Fisher, a brilliant scientist and mathematician, engaged in some major blunders like denying that tobacco had any relationship to lung cancer and other disease. This was another. His “conclusion” that the more “successful” members of society should breed in preference to the less successful. There are three major fallacies in his argument and that of other eugenics supporters other than the obvious ethical and moral problems. First, human success in any society is determined by both genetic and environmental factors. In general, it is currently impossible to know who the successful would be if environmental factors were equal. Second, our concept of success is quite narrow from an evolutionary point of view. The most successful humans might be those who produce that most children, or those who extend man’s habitat, or those who will be most resistant to a pandemic that will arise in the near future. Third, by the standards of much of English society at the time, the most “successful” people were the monarchy and heredity aristocracy, There was already too much inbreeding in these groups and increasing this groups breeding rather than others would not only weaken the species over time, but would limit the variation that is necessary for natural selection and further evolution of the human species.
This quotation illustrates the bizarre logic used by some war enthusiasts once Darwin’s evolutionary principles received wide distribution. Kellogg explains their notion. The absurdity is that there is nothing that characterizes the soldiers who lived differentially from the soldiers who died. The survivors of a bomb if any are random or determined by position and not intellect, courage, strength or any other trait that might be used selectively. See Kellogg’s explanation {631167}.
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.
