[Quotes] [History, #1, #2, #3, #5]
"CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN stands among the giants of Western thought because he convinced a majority of his peers that all of life shares a single, if complex, history. He taught us that we can understand life's history in purely naturalistic terms, without recourse to the supernatural or divine." (Eldredge N., "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p.13).
[top]"Here, then, is Darwin's dangerous idea: the algorithmic level is the level that best accounts for the speed of the antelope, the wing of the eagle, the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species, and all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature. It is hard to believe that something as mindless and mechanical as an algorithm could produce such wonderful things. No matter how impressive the products of an algorithm, the underlying process always consists of nothing but a set of individually mindless steps succeeding each other without the help of any intelligent supervision; they are `automatic' by definition: the workings of an automaton. They feed on each other, or on blind chance-coin-flips, if you like-and on nothing else. ... Can it really be the outcome of nothing but a cascade of algorithmic processes feeding on chance? And if so, who designed that cascade? Nobody. It is itself the product of a blind, algorithmic process. As Darwin himself put it, in a letter to the geologist Charles Lyell shortly after publication of Origin, "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent ... if I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish ...'" (Dennett D.C., "Darwin 's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and The Meanings of Life," [1995], Penguin: London, 1996, reprint, pp.59-60. Emphasis Dennett's).
[top]"Two shafts of criticism struck Darwin more directly than the outside world was allowed to know. They touched his particular theory that evolution took place by natural selection, a process analogous to the artificial selection which plant and animal breeders were practicing with such great success at that time. The first criticism asserted that Darwin's thesis was not true; the second, that it was not new. Such criticisms are raised against all revolutionary hypotheses, but both of these were serious and well informed." (Darlington C.D., "The Origin of Darwinism," Scientific American, Vol. 201, May 1959, p.60).
[top]"The problem confronting Darwin at the end of 1838 was not so much the fact that if he communicated his ideas he would be severely criticized, but rather the fact that he did not have very much to communicate. His theory had, in essence, preceded his knowledge-that is, he had hit upon a novel and evocative theory of evolution with limited knowledge at hand to satisfy either himself or others that the theory was true. He could neither accept it himself nor prove it to others. He simply did not know enough concerning the several natural history fields upon which his theory would have to be based." (Gale B.G., "Evolution Without Evidence: Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species," University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque NM, 1982, p.8).
[top]"In fact, the belief in Natural Selection must at present be grounded entirely on general considerations. (1) On its being a vera causa, from the struggle for existence; and the certain geological fact that species do somehow change. (2) From the analogy of change under domestication by man's selection. (3) And chiefly from this view connecting under an intelligible point of view a host of facts. When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed [i.e. we cannot prove that a single species has changed]; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory. Nor can we explain why some species have changed and others have not." (Darwin C.R., letter to G. Bentham, May 22 1863, in Darwin F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, p.210. Parentheses in original).
[top]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.
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