Selection Theories Quotes

Anyone who writes about Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently. ~ Ernst Mayr

Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from physical violence to the peaceful accumulation of wealth and status. The rights to life, liberty, and property are cultural inventions that function, in part, to keep males from killing and stealing from one another while they compete to attract sexual partners. ~ Geoffrey Miller

It would indeed seem more expedient to treat the history of thought in terms borrowed from biology..(, with) "evolution" .. a wasteful, fumbling process characterized by sudden mutations of unknown cause, by the slow grinding of selection, and by the dead-ends of overspecialization and rigid inadaptability.. New ideas are thrown up spontaneously like mutations; the vast majority of them are useless crank theories, the equivalent of biological freaks without survival-value. There is a constant struggle for survival between competing theories in every branch of the history of thought. The process of "natural selection", too, has its equivalent in mental evolution: among the multitude of new concepts which emerge only those survive which are well adapted to the period's intellectual milieu. A new theoretical concept will live or die according to whether it can come to terms with this environment.. ~ Arthur Koestler

More about the selection theory: Jerne meant that the Socratic idea of learning was a fitting analogy for 'the logical basis of the selective theories of antibody formation': Can the truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) be learned? If so, it must be assumed not to pre-exist; to be learned, it must be acquired. We are thus confronted with the difficulty to which Socrates calls attention in Meno [ ... ] namely, that it makes as little sense to search for what one does not know as to search for what one knows; what one knows, one cannot search for, since one knows it already, and what one does not know, one cannot search for, since one does not even know what to search for. Socrates resolves this difficulty by postulating that learning is nothing but recollection. The truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) cannot be brought in, but was already inherent. ~ Niels Kaj Jerne

Sympathy will have been increased through natural selection ~ Charles Darwin

Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level. ~ E. O. Wilson

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. ~ Vernor Vinge

I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification. ~ Charles Darwin

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection. ~ Charles Darwin

Natural selection must be replaced by eugenical artificial selection. This idea constitutes the sound core of eugenics, the applied science of human betterment. ~ Theodosius Dobzhansky

Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability. ~ Ronald A. Fisher

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. ~ Paul Bettany

Natural selection has ensured that each species achieves the requisite effect somehow, but it doesn't care, so to speak, how the trick is done. ~ David Papineau

Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives. ~ Richard Dawkins

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something. ~ Kary Mullis

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random. ~ Richard Dawkins

This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. ~ Charles Darwin

Is there a better example of natural selection in action than 'Project Runway?' ~ Jamais Cascio

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. ~ Charles Darwin

Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes; our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture. ~ Daniel Dennett

Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection. ~ Richard Leakey

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent. ~ Charles Darwin

It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed but what CAN BE observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories. And often those expectations get in the way. ~ Michael Crichton

Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sensual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change. ~ Oscar Wilde

Sexual selection will also be largely dominated by natural selection tending towards the general welfare of the species. ~ Charles Darwin

Theories without data are like daydreams. ~ Jonathan Rottenberg

We must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains. ~ Edward Tatum

There are a lot of theories about Shakespeare. ~ Christina Ricci

Incidental by-products of alterations in other traits? Belyaev strongly leaned toward the latter view, because of a phenomenon known as "pleiotropy": a single gene affecting multiple traits. Pleiotropy means that selection - whether natural or artificial - for one trait can affect many others. This is why evolutionary biologists make a distinction between selection for and selection of.9 ~ Anonymous

...an incomplete listing of anything reveals that a selection has been made, and any act of selection is of course political. ~ Christopher Priest

Theories look great on paper until reality scribbles all over the page. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works. ~ David M. Raup

Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement ~ Stephen Jay Gould

That's the thing about theories. You can theorize what you want, but at the end of the day when your theories become reality, when the situation you have theorized about is suddenly presented to you, your theories go flying out the windowز ~ Jane Green

One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection. ~ Jeff Bezos

Proponents of intelligent design don't accept that some of the very complex nanomachines that we have inside ourselves could have come about solely on the basis of natural selection. ~ Francis Collins

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species. ~ Konrad Lorenz

I worked, and I was excited about the next time the five of us had a joint class.
When that time came, Silvia started by asking us what we were passionate about. I scribbled down my family, music, and then, as if the word demanded to be written, justice. ~ Kiera Cass

Natural selection based on the differential multiplication of variant types cannot exist before there is material capable of replicating itself and its own variations, that is, before the origination of specifically genetic material or gene-material. ~ Hermann Joseph Muller

Caste is important for selection of home minister. ~ Sushilkumar Shinde

Out on the ragged edge of space, there was no time for theories. ~ Adam Christopher

Natural selection involves no plan, no goal, and no direction - just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with those genes have, relative to other individuals, greater or lesser reproductive success. ~ Randolph M. Nesse

We are built to be dupes for theories. But theories come and go; experience stays. Explanations ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another - that, in fact, has never been observed. ~ Robert J. Sawyer

Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning. ~ Richard Dawkins

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection. ~ Charles Darwin

Natural selection deals ruthlessly with any population, bird or beaver, which fails to solve the problems of its environment with all those resources, learned or unlearned, which may be at its disposal. ~ Robert Ardrey

Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time. ~ Steven Pinker

It is good to keep in mind ... that nobody has ever succeeded in producing even one new species by the accumulation of micromutations. Darwin's theory of natural selection has never had any proof, yet it has been universally accepted. ~ Richard Goldschmidt

You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live. ~ George Bernard Shaw

There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion. ~ Richard Dawkins

We've become a nation of Frankensteins, and our monster is us. With everyone working so hard at altering their facades, we no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. ~ Maureen Dowd

If you want the shortest version of my answer to the question of why Buddhism is true, it's this: Because we are animals created by natural selection. Natural selection built into our brains the tendencies that early Buddhist thinkers did a pretty amazing job of sizing up, given the meager scientific resources at their disposal. Now, in light of the modern understanding of natural selection and the modern understanding of the human brain that natural selection produced, we can provide a new kind of defense of this sizing up. ~ Robert Wright

Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory. ~ J. Tuzo Wilson

Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. ~ Aldous Huxley

The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much. ~ Charles Darwin

It's hard to get a hug wrong. ~ Kiera Cass

The millionaires are a product of natural selection ... the naturally selected agents of society for certain work. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society. ~ William Graham Sumner

What could not be denied was that in vast segments of the animal world natural selection of the most qualified individuals took place not by competition for females but by competition for space. ~ Robert Ardrey

These capacities for randomness may have been amplified into human creativity through sexual and social selection. ~ Geoffrey Miller

Desire for beauty will endure and undermine the desire for truth. ~ Richard O. Prum

Memetics provides a new approach to the evolution of language in which we apply Darwinian thinking to two replicators, not one. On this theory, memetic selection, as well as genetic selection, does the work of creating language. ~ Susan Blackmore

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection. ~ Edmund Burke

The only thing that counts in life is solid, material assets. It's no time for theories when everything is falling to pieces around us. ~ Ayn Rand

Causes of Variability - Effects of Habit and the use and disuse of Parts - Correlated Variation - Inheritance - Character of Domestic Varieties - Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and Species - Origin of Domestic Varieties from one or more Species - Domestic Pigeons, their Differences and Origin - Principles of Selection, anciently followed, their Effects - Methodical and Unconscious Selection - Unknown Origin of our Domestic Productions - Circumstances favourable to Man's power of Selection. ~ Charles Darwin

We live in a cultural milieu ... The idea that culture is our ecological niche is still applicable. The impact and force of natural selection on the human physique are conditioned by the dimensions of culture. ~ C. Loring Brace

In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths, estimated fortunately to make up only 1 to 4 percent of the population. The products of the opposing two vectors in natural selection are hardwired in our emotions and reasoning, and cannot be erased. Internal conflict is not a personal irregularity but a timeless human quality. No such conflict exists or can exist in an eagle, fox, or spider, for example, whose traits were born solely of individual selection, or a worker ant, whose social traits were shaped entirely by group selection. ~ Edward O. Wilson

Selection of crews is always been somewhat of a mystery. ~ Robert Crippen

Oxygen flooded into the atmosphere as a pollutant, even a poison, until natural selection shaped living things to thrive on the stuff and, indeed, suffocate without it. ~ Richard Dawkins

I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I'm the reporter. ~ Kate Adie

While I rather doubt whether, as has often been claimed, everyone has at least one novel inside them, it is undeniably true of theories ... ~ Richard C. Cox

Natural selection is anything but random. ~ Richard Dawkins

Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation. ~ Allen Tate

There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution ~ John Gray

We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more. ~ Tracy Letts

Whoever has the mind stuffed with theories and more theories, suffers horribly because he is unable to realize nothing of what they have read.. ~ Samael Aun Weor

There is no department of practical politics
where idealistic theories are strong enough to
cause great changes; when great changes occur, the
theories which justify them are always a
camouflage for passion. And the passion that has
given driving force to democratic theories is
undoubtedly the passion of envy. ~ Bertrand Russell

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection. ~ Irving Babbitt

We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form: The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time. ~ Ronald Fisher

We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest. ~ Maureen Dowd

It is a common weakness that when concrete facts do not match up with our preconceived theories, we prefer to keep our theories and live in an imaginary world, rather than face the facts and alter our theories to suit them. Many lengths are gone to, to preserve our theories, especially in the spiritual realm--but there comes a time when we all have to realize that fact is fact and theory is only theory and must be dealt with accordingly. ~ Raphael Gasson

You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

There are several theories on sex and all of them are lies. ~ Santosh Kalwar

Ancient theories of justice start with virtue, while modern theories start with freedom. And ~ Michael J. Sandel

Stories are the untested, uninvestigated theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don't even realize that they're just theories. ~ Byron Katie

Nevertheless, an iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. The victory can never be complete; the balance of selection pressures cannot move to either extreme. If individual selection were to dominate, societies would dissolve. If group selection were to dominate, human groups would come to resemble ant colonies. ~ Edward O. Wilson

Bands don't play the whole LP. They play a selection of the songs that they like. ~ Peter Hook

As the brain and body were shaped by natural selection, consumer goods adapted to the mind through a parallel process of product selection, which has rendered them ever more fluent, expressive, and fascinating to our senses. ~ David B. Givens

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced. ~ T. S. Eliot

Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared. ~ Ted Rall

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. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. Look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Zero dwells at the juxtaposition of quantum mechanics and relativity; zero lives where the two theories meet, and zero causes the two theories to clash. A black hole is a zero in the equations of general relativity; the energy of the vacuum is a zero in the mathematics of quantum theory. The big bang, the most puzzling event in the history of the universe, is a zero in both theories. The universe came from nothing-and both theories break down when they try to explain the origin of the cosmos. ~ Charles Seife

Science is very cross-generational; you're not just aiming it at twentysomethings, or eightysomethings. Every town's got a really broad selection of people and age groups interested in science. ~ Robin Ince

If I hope to survive, I have to acknowledge the natural selection that goes on when film stocks and cameras are eliminated from the world. And film viewers won't want to watch the same thing over and over again from me. ~ Guy Maddin

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life. ~ John Drinkwater

I know my theories and findings are hard for you to accept because they are so original and extraordinary. ~ Alex Chiu

Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories. ~ John Wilmot