quotations about evolution
Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.
WOODROW WILSON
letter to Winterton C. Curtis, Aug. 29, 1922
Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations.
HERBERT SPENCER
First Principles
I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with an Almighty Creator and Protector.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
letter to David Brown, Apr. 4, 1874
Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent, impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent personal God. I repeat what I have already said in this volume, that I am a theistic evolutionist; that is, I believe that the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed, which is the All in all, is an Energy that thinks, feels, and wills -- a self-conscious, intelligent, moral Being. Evolution does not claim to be the last word. There is no last word. Evolution itself is inconsistent with the idea that there can be any last word. The doctrine of evolution is the doctrine of perpetual growth, and therefore every word spoken prepares for another and a further word. If it is to be accepted at all, it is to be accepted as, on the whole, the grandest generalization of our age, if not of any age -- the best statement of the process of life that has yet been uttered.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
LANGDON SMITH
"Evolution"
Darwin's a chimp off the old block.
JOSEPH JULIUS BONKOWSKI
JR., Quote Me
Why don't we see gradual transition in the sequences of fossils? According to Darwin, and the current neo-Darwinists, the fossil record has gaps in it because of the haphazard way in which fossilization occurs--it is bound to be an imperfect record of the history of life. But is it? Is the jerky and abrupt nature of the record really just due to 'gaps', or does it reflect the way evolution actually happened? There is a strong feeling among leading palaeontologists that the punctuated history shown by fossils reflects the way life has evolved-in leaps and bounds rather than in gradual transition. There is also a growing sense that there is much more to understanding 'macroevolution' -- the large-scale picture one gets from the fossils -- than the simple idea of natural selection can alone explain.
BRIAN LEITH
"The Descent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts about Darwinism"
Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance.
EDWIN H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.
CHARLES DARWIN
On the Origin of the Species
Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often incapable of finding the optimal solution to an engineering problem. But it is not a good example at all. Even if nature could have evolved a moose on wheels, it surely would have opted not to. Wheels are good only in a world with roads and rails. They bog down in any terrain that is soft, slippery, steep, or uneven. Legs are better. Wheels have to roll along an unbroken supporting ridge, but legs can be placed on a series of separate footholds, an extreme example being a ladder. Legs can also be placed to minimize lurching and to step over obstacles. Even today, when it seems as if the world has become a parking lot, only about half of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with wheels or tracks, but most of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with feet: animals, the vehicles designed by natural selection.
STEVEN PINKER
How the Mind Works
Evolution believes that man is emerging from an animal condition. The body is the animal out of which he is eventually to be developed. The animal still clings to him. It is at once a help and a hindrance. It is a help to his spiritual development because it is a hindrance, and because the spiritual development comes by battle, and in no other way. There is no possible way by which a man can acquire temperance unless he has appetites to be subdued; no way by which he can acquire self-control, unless he has animal passions to be controlled; no way by which he can acquire courage, unless he has timidity to be overcome. There must be the temptation within as well as the moral nature within, or the moral nature cannot be developed, for it is developed only by conflict with the temptation. First of all, then, man is an emerging and developing being, drawn out from, lifted up from, a lower animal condition. He is in battle with his own body. He is like the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis; like the bird * pecking its way out of the shell; like the seed breaking its husk and emerging from the ground. The seed is in captivity to the ground, and must be emancipated; the bird is in captivity to the shell, and must be freed from its imprisonment; the insect is in captivity to the chrysalis, and must break from its prisonhouse. And as the plant is not a plant until it has broken away from the soil and come into the sunlight, as the bird is not a bird until it has broken out of the shell and come into the air, as the butterfly is not a butterfly until it has escaped from the chrysalis, so not until the man has broken away from the animal and come out of it and conquered it and subdued it is he truly a man. The evolution of the spirit is itself redemption from the flesh.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist