The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses.
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.
Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved
Charles Darwin got his theory, his notion of natural selection, evolution, and so did its independent discoverer, Alfred Wallace, from reading Malthus.
I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower from, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction.
Having examined the principal points in which the several tribes of the human species differ from each other... I proceed to inquire whether the diversities enumerated ... are to be considered as characteristic distinctions coeval with the origin of the species, or as a result of subsequent variation; and in the event of the latter... whether they are the effect of external... causes, or of native or congenital variety.
Whatever the life form, evolution selects for economy of resources.
In fact, humans have less variation genetically than chimpanzees.
Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes; our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.
Unfortunately, with dinosaurs, we haven't had enough specimens to determine how much variation there is within a species.
Like other organisms, humans have a certain genetic endowment (apparently varying little in the species, not a surprise considering its recent separation from other hominids). That determines what we call their nature.
We should not live by Darwinian principles. But Darwin explains how we got here.
That the variability of an organism to a certain extent is a constant and certain condition of life we admit, otherwise there would be no distinguishable individuals of a species.
If penicillin had been judged by its toxicity to guinea pigs, it might never have been used by man.
If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.
I had found again and again that the most aberrant population of a species - often having reached species rank, and occasionally classified even as a separate genus - occurred at a peripheral location, indeed usually at the most isolated peripheral location.
A major fault, for example, is the fact that, along with the materialist principle, Darwin introduced into his theory of evolution reactionary Malthusian ideas.
Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'
All mammals undergo a certain degree of diversification. Darwin knew that. When he drew a family tree, it had many branches on it.
Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive.
Perceptual reality is different for different species. In certain species it is a mode of observation, so what we call scientific fact is actually not ultimate truth, it is perceptual experience, and it's a mode of observation.
Darwin didn't walk around the Galapagos and come up with the theory of evolution. He was exploring, collecting, making observations. It wasn't until he got back and went through the samples that he noticed the differences among them and put them in context.
Following the creation concept that creation processes differed from preservation processes, it is suggested that God endowed each created kind, at the time of its creation, with potential for vast variety.
There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.
