[Quotes] [History, #1, #2, #3, #4]
"A long-enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculation. 'Explanations' of the origin of structures, instincts, and mental aptitudes of all kinds, in terms of Darwinian principles, marked with the Darwinian plausibility but hopelessly unverifiable, poured out from every research centre. The speculations on the origin and significance of the resemblances between animals, or between animals and their environment and of the striking colour patterns they often exhibit, constitute one of the best-known examples." (Thompson W.R.*, "Introduction," in Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1967, reprint, pp.xxi).
[top]"It was-and still is-very hard to arrive at this concept from inside biology. The trouble lay in an unremitting cultural struggle which had developed from 1860 onward between biologists on the one hand and the supporters of old beliefs on the other. The old believers said that rabbits had been created by God using methods too wonderful for us to comprehend. The new believers said that rabbits had been created from sludge, by methods too complex for us to calculate and by methods likely enough involving improbable happenings. Improbable happenings replaced miracles and sludge replaced God, with believers both old and new seeking to cover up their ignorance in clouds of words, but different words. It was over the words that passions raged, passions which continue to rumble on in the modern world, passions that one can read about with hilarious satisfaction in the columns of the weekly science magazine Nature and listen to in basso profundo pronouncements from learned scientific societies." (Hoyle F., "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p.3)
[top]"As I said, we shall all be embarrassed, in the fullness of time, by the naivete of our present evolutionary arguments. But some will be vastly more embarrassed than others." (Piattelli-Palmarini, M., "Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds," John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1994, p.195)
[top]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.
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Created 1 October, 1999. Updated: 1 July, 2003.