Paul Bloom Quotes

It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.

The idea that you would affect evolution is a very profound thing.

Evolution - evolutionary change - does not happen quickly.

Natural selection is not evolution.

Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science - in all of biology.

Evolution is a tinkerer.

Natural selection is not an inflammatory phrase; evolution is.

Natural selection certainly operates. It explains how bacteria will gain antibiotic resistance; it will explain how insects get insecticide resistance, but it doesn't explain how you get bacteria or insects in the first place.

What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality.

For me, the level at which natural selection causes the phenomenon of adaptation is the level of the replicator - the gene.

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.

Life cannot arise spontaneously but comes only from preexisting life.

First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence.

Evolution has long been the target of illogical arguments that use presumption.

The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful.

Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.

When I see how fast technology is advancing, my mind thinks of evolution and how organisms also have to evolve or adapt in order to, in their case, survive.

With evolution, things are always changing, so I sort of think: Should we all be growing three heads?

I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed.

Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.