Philosophers from Ancient to Today
Quotations showing belief in instinctual and relative knowledge
(and other thoughts).
Compiled beginning July 1, 2007
- PYTHAGORAS (b.580BC) Greek
- ANAXAGORAS (b.500BC) Greek
- SOCRATES (b.470BC) Greek
- PLATO (b.424) Greek
- NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (b.1469) Italian
- ERASMUS (b.1469) Dutch
- MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (b.1533) French
- RENE DESCARTES (b.1596) French
- BARUCH DE SPINOZA (b.1634) Dutch
- DAVID HUME (b.1711) Scottish
- OLAUDAH EQUIANO (b.1745) Nigerian
- ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (b.1788) German
- CHARLES DARWIN (b.1809) English
- THOMAS HARDY (b.1840) English
- JOHAN HUIZINGA (b.1872) Dutch
- MARSHALL MCLUHAN (b.1911) Canadian
- THOMAS KUHN (b.1922) American
- MURRAY GELL-MANN (b.1929) American
- NEIL POSTMAN (b.1931) American
- RICHARD DAWKINS (b.1941) English
- RICHARD MILTON (b.1943) English
- STEVEN PINKER (b.1954) Canadian
- JAMES GLEICK (b.1954) American
- LEDA COSMIDES (b.1957) American
- CORDELIA FINE (b.1969?) English?
- TOM SIEGFRIED (B.19??) American?
PYTHAGORAS
Pythagoras "Our life is like the vast throng assembled for the Olympic Games."
(Cicero Tusc. disput V,iii.)
ANAXAGORAS
"Anaxagoras said mind is really the arranger and cause of all things"
Plato, Phaedo 97D
SOCRATES
"He did not discourse about the nature of the physical universe.... ...he pointed out the
foolishness of those who concerned themselves with such questions....
He expressed surprise that it was
not obvious to them that human minds cannot discover these secrets, inasmuch
as those who claim most confidently to pronounce upon them do
not hold the same theories, but disagree
with one another like lunatics."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates)'...our foreheads have been fringed with eyebrows to prevent damage even
from the sweat of the head. ...Are you in real doubt whether such provident arrangements
are the result of chance or of design? ...And the implanting of the instincts to procreate, and
the implanting in the female parent of the instinct to rear her young, and in the young
so reared an intense desire to live and an intense fear of death' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 1.4.7, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates telling a story) 'Nothing that is really good and admirable
is granted by the gods to men without some effort
and application."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 2.1.25, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...whom can we find that enjoy greater benefits than children receive
from their parents? Their parents have brought them into existence from non-existence...' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 2.2.3, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates)'...a man must have a great many other qualities, natural and acquired.'"
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.1.8, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) 'You know how athletes sometimes, when they have enjoyed unchallenged
superiority, through sheer lack of enterprise, become no match for their opponents?' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.5.14, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...a shield which is fine for defence is totally unlike a spear which is fine
for throwing hard and fast. ...people are called "fine" and "good" on the same grounds
and with same ends in view...' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.8.1, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...every natural disposition can be developed...."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.9.1, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...you are using the term "well proportioned" not absolutely, but in
relation to the wearer...."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.10.12, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...even the most delightful dishes seem disagreeable if they are served
before the appetite is ready, and if one is satiated, they actually cause disgust; but
even inferior food seems quite attractive if it is served after hunger has been aroused,' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.11.12, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...Even the act of thinking, which is supposed to require least
assistance from the body, everyone knows that serious mistakes often happen through
physical ill-health.' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.12.6, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates regarding "Know thyself") 'Those who do not
know themselves and are totally deceived about their own
abilities....don't know what they want or what they are doing or what means they are using;
and, through making gross mistakes about all these, they miss the good things
and get into trouble.' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.2.29, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) 'Then, if these things are sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful, are
they any more good than bad?'
(Euthydemus)'Not a bit, it seems, according to your argument.' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.2.33, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) never stopped investigating...the meaning of every single term."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.6.1, 380 (approx) BC
"...he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought
that this was the infallible method of argument. ...He used to say that Homer
himself attributed to Odysseus the quality of being an infallible speaker, because he could base his
arguments on the accepted beliefs of his hearers.
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.6.15, 380 (approx) BC
"In general, he dissuaded them from concerning themselves with the way in which
God regulates the various heavenly bodies, he thought that these facts were not discoverable
by human beings. ....he told his companions to guard against purposeless research; and he
himself helped them in their investigations and explanations only so far as was useful."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.7.8, 380 (approx) BC
"...the boy performed a dance, and Socrates said, 'Did you see how, beautiful as the boy
is, he nevertheless looks even more beautiful in the figures of the dance than when
he is keeping still?'"
Xenophon, The Dinner Party, 2.14 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...the bloom of youth, as we know, quickly passes its prime, and when this fails,
affection must fade along with it; but so long as the mind is progressing towards
greater wisdom the more lovable it becomes. Then again, involvement with physical
beauty entails a sort of satiety, so that one is bound to lose interest in a
favourite in just the same way as repletion makes one lose interest in food; but
affection for the mind, being pure, is less liable to satiety.' "
Xenophon, The Dinner Party, 8.13 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) ' ...enemies too are assets for someone who is capable of deriving benefit from them.' "
Xenophon, The Estate-Manager, 1.14 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...everyone is naturally inclined to love
the things which they think will profit them' "
Xenophon, The Estate-Manager, 20.30, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...everyone has equal knowledge...'"
Xenophon, The Estate-Manager, 20.1 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...the soul is immortal and often born, having seen what is on earth and what is
in the house of Hades, and everything, there is nothing it has not learnt;
so there is no wonder it can remember about virtue and other things, because it knew
about these before. For since all nature is akin, and the soul has learnt everything
, here is nothing to hinder a man, remembering one thing only - which men call
learning - from himself finding out all else...for seeking and learning is all
remembrance.' "
Plato, Meno, 81B, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...both in the time when he is a man and when he isn't there are to be
true opinions in him, which are awakened by questioning and become knowledge....
the truth of things is always in our soul....'"
Plato, Meno, 86B, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...if we believe that we must try to find
out what is not known, we should be better and braver and less idle than if we believed
that what we do not know it is impossible to find out and that we need not even try.'
"Socrates: 'Since we agree that we must try to find out about
what we do not know....'"
Plato, Meno, 86E, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: 'Since we don't know what it is or what it is like, let us make
our hypothesis or ground to stand on, and then consider whether it can be taught or not.'"
Plato, Meno, 87B, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...good men must be useful'"
Plato, Meno, 97A, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...since neither knowledge nor true opinion comes to mankind by nature
, being acquired...'"
Plato, Meno, 98D, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...virtue is seen as coming neither by nature nor by teaching; but by divine
allotment incomprehensibly to those to whom it comes.'"
Plato, Meno, 98D, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...something divine and spiritual comes to me.... This has been about
me since my boyhood, a voice, which when it comes always turns me away from doing
something I am intending to do, but never urges me on.'"
Plato, Apology, 32A, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...so long as we have the body with us in our enquiry, and our soul is mixed
up with so great an evil, we shall never attain sufficiently what we desire, and that,
we say, is the truth. ...either knowledge is possible nowhere, or only after death....'"
Plato, Phaedo, 67A, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...we got it before we were born.... ...I mean everything which we seal
with the name "that which is", the essence."
Plato, Phaedo, 67A, 380 (approx) BC
PLATO
"...man is made God's plaything, and that is the best part of him. Therefore every man and woman should live
accordingly, and play the noblest games and be of another mind from what they are at present... Life
must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man
will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest."
Plato Laws, vii, 803
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
"...yet everyone, for all this diversity of method, can reach his objective
...two men succeed equally well with different methods."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p80
"The nobles . . . takes sides with the one whom they expect to win."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513 p32
"There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the second appreciates what
others can understand, the third understands neither for itself or for others. The first kind
is excellent, the second good and the third kind useless."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p75
"...so as not to rule out free will, I believe that it is probably true that fortune is the arbiter
of half the things we do, leaving the other half or so to be controlled by ourselves."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p79
"...because he cannot do otherwise than what is in character or ..."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p81
ERASMUS
"...the charm of folly, which thoughtful Nature has
taken care to bestow on the newly born so that they can offer
some reward of pleasure to mitigate the hard work of bringing them up
and the win the liking of those who look after them." Erasmus, Praise of Folly (22), 1509
"...the life of man is nothing but a sport of folly...". Erasmus, Praise of Folly (116), 1509
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
"(essay title) We reach the same end by discrepant means."
"...assaulted and assayed by both those methods
can be seen to resist one,
without flinching, only to bow to the other.
Michel De Montaigne 1580
If I had not seen it I could hardly have made myself believe that you could find souls so
monstrous that they would commit murder for the sheer fun of it..."
Michel De Montaigne, On cruelty, 1580
"How many have we seen patiently suffering to be roasted or burnt for opinions which,
without understanding or knowledge, they have taken from others!"
Michel De Montaigne, In defence of Seneca and Plutarch
"What a prodigious thing it is that within the drop of semen which brings
forth there are stamped the characteristics not only the bodily form of our forefathers but or their
ways of thinking and their slant of mind. Where can that drop of fluid
lodge such and infinite number of Forms."
Michel De Montaigne, On the resemblance of
children to their fathers. 1580
"The affair cost him hardly anything, but he gets nothing worthwhile out of it either."
Michel De Montaigne, On three kinds of social intercourse, 1580
"But no matter what we may say, the customs and practices of life in society sweep
us along. Most of my doings are governed by example not choice."
Michel De Montaigne, On some
lines of Virgil, 1580
"In my day the pleasure of telling of an affair (a pleasure scarcely
less delightful than having one)...."
Michel De Montaigne, On some
lines of Virgil, 1580
We cannot be said to progress but rather to wander about this way and that. We
follow our own footsteps."
Michel De Montaigne, On Coaches, 1580
Where Nature is concerned nothing is unique or rare: but where our knowledge is
concerned much certainty is, which constitutes a most pitiful foundation
for our scientific laws, offering us a very false idea of everything."
Michel De Montaigne, On Coaches, 1580
"Time and custom condition us to anything strange...."
Michel De Montaigne, On the lame, 1580
"...the world is involved in duels about hundreds of questions where both the for and
against are false."
Michel De Montaigne, On the lame, 1580
"No occupation is more powerful, or more feeble, than entertaining one's
own thoughts..."
Michel De Montaigne, On three kinds of social intercourse, 1580
"...everyone of our actions requires to judged on its own: the surest way in my
opinion would be to refer each of them to its context, without looking farther...."
Michel De Montaigne, On the Inconstancy of Our Actions, 1580
"We are entirely made up of bits and pieces...there is as much difference between us and ourselves
as there is between us and other people...we must probe right down inside and find out
what principles make things move...."
Michel De Montaigne, On the Inconstancy of Our Actions, 1580
"We reach the same end by discrepant means...." (title)
"...assaulted and assayed by both those methods
can be seen to resist one, without flinching, only bow to the other."
Michel De Montaigne, We reach the same end by discrepant means, 1580
"...due to our weakness and those due to our wickedness. In the latter
we deliberately brace ourselves against reason's rules, which are imprinted
by Nature; in the former it seems we can call Nature herself as a defence-witness
for having left us so weak and imperfect...."
Michel De Montaigne, On punishing cowardice, 1580
"One man complains less of death itself than of its cutting short the
course of a fine victory."
"I want Death to find me planting my cabbages."
Michel De Montaigne, To philosophize is to learn how to die, 1580
RENE DESCARTES
"I am [I exist], and possess the idea of a being absolutely perfect, that is, of God....
There remains only the inquiry as to the way in which I received this idea from God; for
I have not drawn it from the senses...it is not even a ... fiction of my mind ... and consequently there
but remains the alternative that is in innate, in the same way as is the idea of myself.
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 3, 1647
"...God thus internally disposes my thought...."
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 4, 1647
"...whatever is clearly and distinctly known is true."
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 5, 1647
"...the true ideas that were born with me, the first and chief of which is the idea of God."
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 5, 1647
BARUCH DE SPINOZA (b.1634)
Spinoza p136 Durant Ethics III, prop.7, "The endeavor…wherewith a thing endeavors to persist in its being is
nothing else than the actual essence of that thing. ...nor can things do anything than that which
follows necessarily from their determinate nature".
DAVID HUME
"The transition of thought from the cause to the effect proceeds not from reason.
It derives its origin altogether from custom and experience."
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748, Section 5 (end)
"It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary
an act of the mind {causation] by some instinct or mechanical tendancy which may be infallible in
its operations, may discover itself at the first appearance of life and thought, and may be independent
of all laboured deductions of the understanding. As nature has taught us the use of our limbs ... she
has implanted in us an instinct...."
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748, Section 5 (end)
"Animals, therefore, are not guided in these inferences by reasoning; neither are children; neither are the
generality of mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions; neither are philosophers themselves, who...are governed
by the same maxims. Nature must have provided some other principle, of more ready and more general use and application....
But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it which they
derive from the original hand of nature.... These we denominate "instinct".... ...the experimental
reasoning itself, which we possess in common with the beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life
depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power that acts in us unknown to ourselves..."
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 9 (end), 1748
OLAUDAH EQUIANO
Shocking as this and many other acts of the bloody West India code at first view appear, how is the
iniquity of it heightened when we consider to whom it may be extended. Mr. James Tobin, a zealous
labourer in the vineyard of slavery, gives an account of French Planter, of his acquaintance, in the island
Martinco, who shewed him many a Mulattoes working in the fields like beasts of burden; and he told Mr. Tobin,
these were all the produce of his own loins! And myself have known similar instances.
Pray, reader, are the sons and daughters of the French planter less children by being begotten on black
women? ...is not the slave trade entirely at war with the heart of man?
Olaudah Equiano The Interesting Narrative 1789
AUTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"...Every person has constant aims and motives in accordance with which he directs his conduct, and he can
always account for his individual actions; but if he were asked why he wills at all, or why he
wills to exist at all, he would have no answer. Rather, the question would seem absurd;
and this response would reflect his awareness that he himself is nothing but will, and that his
willing is self-evident....
Indeed, the absence of any (absolute) goal and of any limits is essential to the will, for it is endless striving....
Every goal attained is the starting point of a new lap in the race....
We consider ourselves fairly fortunate if there is still something to wish for, and to strive after, to keep up the game
whereby desire constantly passes into satisfaction, and satisfaction into new desire...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, 29, (end) , 1819
"...we, whose purpose here is to practise not aetiology but philosophy (that is, not relative but absolute
knowledge of the real nature of the world)....
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, 24, (end) , 1819
"...for the will in itself is absolutely free and entirely self-determining, and for it there is no law."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 55, 1819
"Through the knowledge which comes later he learns in the course of experience what he
is , i.e. he gets to know his character. ....I...say that he is his own product prior to all
knowledge, and knowledge comes later merely to shed light on it."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 55, 1819
"...the will dispenses altogether with a final aim and object. It always strives, for
striving is its sole nature, and even the attainment or its goal does not stop the striving."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 56, 1819
"...he has always merely a relative, rather than an absolute, when and where of his existence;
for his place and duration are finite parts of what is infinite and boundless."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"In the end, death must conquer, for we fell into his clutches through birth, and he plays only for a little
while with his prey before he devours it."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...the nature of animals and of man is subject to pain from its origin and in its essence.
If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of desire, because the gratification is immediate
and too easy, a terrible emptiness and ennui come over it...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"Now it is noteworthy that, on the other hand, the suffering and misery
of life may well so increase that death itself, in the
flight from which the whole of life consists, become desirable, and we hasten towards it voluntarily;
and again, on the other hand that soon as want and suffering leave a man in peace, he is so
close to boredom that he needs pleasurable diversion. The striving after existence is what keeps all living things busy and
active. But when existence is assured to them, they do not know what to with it; thus the second thing that
sets them in motion is the effort to be rid of the burden of existence, to make it cease to be felt, 'to kill time'...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...this need for excitement of the will shows itself especially in the devising and playing of card games in which,
truly, the pitiable aspect of mankind finds expression."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...so we start the dance again from the beginning; for all human life is tossed
backwards and forwards between pain and boredom.
Depressing as this reflection may be...we may draw consolation...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...the persistent will to life..."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 58, 1819
"...But perhaps no one at the end of his life, if he gives the matter sober consideration and is, at the same time,
frank, ever wishes to live it over again; he more readily chooses non-existence."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 59, 1819
"...the miseries of life can so increase - and this happens every day - that death, which had hitherto
been feared more than anything else, is eagerly grasped."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 59, 1819
"...the will to life ... cares only for the preservation of the species, and the individual is nothing to it...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 61, 1819
"From the first accession of consciousness a person finds that he wills, and the connection between
his knowledge and his will remains, as rule, constant. He seeks first to become
thoroughly acquainted with the objects of his willing, and then with the means of attaining them. Now he
knows what he has to do, and as a rule, he does not strive to acquire other factual information. He moves and
acts; the consciousness that he is to work towards the goal of his willing keeps him alert and active;
his thought is concerned with the choice of means. Such is the life of almost everyone; they desire, they
know what they desire, and they strive after it with sufficient success
to keep them from despair, and sufficient failure
to save them from boredom and its consequences....They press forward with much
earnestness, and indeed with an air of importance, just
as children also pursue their play."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 60, 1819
CHARLES DARWIN
"As man possesses the same senses as the lower animals,
his fundamental intuitions must be the same. Man has also some few instincts in common, as
that of self-preservation, sexual love, the love of the mother for her new-born offspring,
the desire possessed by the latter to suck, and so forth."
Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Part III,
"Aristotle, in his 'Physicae Auscultationes' (lib.2, cap.8, s.2),...adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece,
who first pointed out the passage to me), 'So what hinders the different parts {of the body} from having
this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones
sharp, adapted by dividing, and grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food, since they were
not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as the other parts in which
there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts
of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved,
having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus
constituted, perished and still perish.' We see here the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little
Aristotle comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.5-6 footnotes
"...it is quite immaterial whether or not Professor Owen preceded me, for
both of us, as shown in this historical sketch,
were long ago preceded by Dr. Wells and Mr. Matthew."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.13
"..it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions
, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker....
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.20
"...variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.20
"...Natural Selection almost inevitably causes Extinction of less improved
forms of life...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.21
"...the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.22
"...I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the
exclusive, means of modification."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.23
"Nothing is more easy than to tame an animal, and few things more difficult than to get it to
breed freely under confinement. ...though kept in almost a free state in their native country!
... Many cultivated plants display the utmost vigor, and yet rarely or never seed."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.27
"Some naturalists have maintained that all variations are connected
with the act of sexual reproduction; but this is
certainly an error; for I have given in another work a long list of "sporting plants," as
they are called by gardeners;--that is, of plants which have
suddenly produced a single bud with a new and sometimes widely different
character from that of the other buds on the same plant.
...buds on common roses producing moss-roses...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.28
"Changed habits produce an inherited effect as in the period of the
flowering of plants when transported from one climate to another. With
animals the increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked
influence; thus I find in the domestic duck that the bones of the wing
weigh less and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole
skeleton, than do the same bones in the wild duck; and this change may be
safely attributed to the domestic duck flying much less, and walking more,
than its wild parents.
"
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.29
"Breeders believe that long limbs are almost always accompanied by an elongated head.
Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical: thus [male} cats which are entirely white and
have blue eyes are generally deaf...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.30
"Any variation which is not inherited is unimportant for us."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.31
"...a statement often made by naturalists -- namely, that our domestic varieties, when run wild, gradually
but invariably revert in character to their aboriginal stocks.... If it could be shown that our
domestic varieties manifested a strong tenancy to reversion, -- that is, to lose their acquired characters,
whilst kept in a considerable body, so that free intercrossing might check, by blending together, any slight deviations
in their structure, in such case, I grant that we could deduce nothing from domestic varieties in regard to
species. But there is not a shadow of evidence in favour of this view...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.33
"...by crossing we can only get forms intermediate between their parents...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.38
"...man adds them up in certain directions useful to him."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.50
"...a form of Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every one trying to posess and breed
from the best individual animals...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.55
"...it is in human nature to value any novelty, however slight, in one's own possession."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.59
"Some, perhaps a great, effect may be attributed to increased use or disuse of parts."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.63
"Authors sometimes argue in a circle
when they state that important organs never vary; for these same authors
practically rank those parts as important (as some few naturalists have
honestly confessed) which do not vary; and, under this point of view, no
instance will ever be found of an important part varying; but under any
other point of view many instances assuredly can be given."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.68
"...I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.72
"Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between species and sub-species...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.77
"From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for
the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and
that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.
The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for
convenience sake."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.78
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term
Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression
often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally
convenient."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.88
Nothing is easier than to
admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more
difficult--at least I found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion
in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole
economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance,
extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.88
"Natural Selection...is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature
are to those of Art."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.89
The Term, Struggle for Existence, used in a large sense.
I should premise that I use this term
in a large and metaphorical sense including dependance on one being on another, and including
(which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.90
"...probably in no one case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another
in the great battle of life."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.104
"This preservation of favorable individual difference and variations, and the destruction of those which
are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest".
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.108
"Some have even imagined that natural selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the
preservation of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its
conditions of life. ... Others have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in
the animals which become modified; and it has even been urged that, as plants have no volition,
natural selection is not applicable to them! In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection
is a false term...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.109
"...as foreigners have thus in every country beaten some of the natives, we may safely conclude
that the native might have been modified with advantage, so as to have better resisted the intruders."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.111
"Nature...cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act
on every internal organ...on the whole machinery of life. Man only selects for his own good...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.111
----------------
"It may be well here to remark that with all beings there must be much fortuitous destruction,
which can have little or no influence on the course of natural selection. … Yet many of these
eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed, have yielded individuals better adapted to their
conditions of life than any of those which happened to survive. So again the vast numbers
of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be the best adapted to their conditions,
must be annually destroyed by accidental causes.... But let the destruction of the adults be
ever so heavy…or again let the destruction of eggs or seeds be so great that only a hundredth
or a thousandth part are developed, -- yet of those which do survive, the best adapted
individuals, supposing that there is any variability in a favourable direction,
will tend to propagate their kind in larger numbers then the less well adapted." p.116
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.123
"...the act of crossing, as can be fully proved, gives rise to vigorous seedlings which
consequently would have the best chance of flourishing and surviving."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.123
"...close interbreeding diminishes vigor and fertility...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.128
"Though Nature grants long periods of time for the work of natural selection, she does not grant an indefinite
period; for as all organic beings are striving to seize on each place in the economy of nature,
if any one species does not become modified and improved in corresponding degree with its competitors, it will
be exterminated."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.133
"...occasional intercrosses take place with all animals and plants. Even if these take place only at long
intervals of time, the young thus produced will gain so much in vigor and fertility over the offspring
from long-continued self-fertilization, that they will have a better chance of surviving and propagating their kind;
and thus in the long run the influence of crosses, even at rare intervals, will be great."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.135
"The mere lapse of time by itself does nothing, either for or against natural selection. ...
...it gives a better chance of beneficial variations arising and of their being selected, accumulated, and fixed."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.137
"These anomalous forms may be called living fossils; they have endured to the present day, from
having inhabited a confined area, from having been exposed to less varied, and therefore less severe, competition."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.139
To sum up, as far as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits, the
circumstances favourable and unfavourable for the production of new species
through natural selection.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.140
...there will again have been very severe
competition; the most favoured or improved varieties will have been enabled
to spread; there will have been much extinction of the less improved forms,
and the relative proportional numbers of the various inhabitants of the
reunited continent will again have been changed; and again there will have
been a fair field for natural selection to improve still further the
inhabitants, and thus to produce new species.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.140
"That natural selection generally acts with extreme slowness I fully admit. It can act only when there are
places in the natural polity of a district which can be better occupied by the modification of some of its
existing inhabitants."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.140
"...if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to
the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings....through nature's power of selection...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.141
"Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of variations of some advantage, which consequently endure."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.141
"...each new variety or species...will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to
exterminate them. "
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.142
"...according to my view, varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as I have called them,
incipient species."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.143
"As has always been my practice, I have sought light on this head [natural selection]
from our domestic productions. We shall here
find something analogous."
Charles
Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.143
"...the acknowledged principle that 'fanciers do not and will not admire a medium standard, but like extremes,' "
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.144
"...the more diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure, constitution, and
habits, by so much will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in the
polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.145
"The truth of the principle that the greatest amount of life can be supported by the greatest
diversification of structure, is seen under many natural circumstances." [competition is bad]
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.146
"...natural selection will always act according to the nature of the places which are either
unoccupied or not perfectly occupied by other beings, and this will depend on infinitely complex relations.
But as a general rule, the more
diversified in structure the descendants from any one species can be
rendered, the more places they will be enabled to seize on, and the more
their modified progeny will increase."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.152
"...it should be remembered that the competition will generally be most severe between those
forms which are most nearly related to each other in habits, constitution, and structure. Hence all the
intermediate forms between the earlier and later states, that is between the less and more
improved states of the same species, as well as the original parent-species itself, will
generally tend to become extinct."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.154
"...which groups will ultimately prevail, no man can predict...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.159
...naturalists have not defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by an advance in organization.
...Von Baer's standard seems most widely applicable and the best, namely, the amount of differentiation
of the parts of the same organic being...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.160
"...it is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit a being to a
situation in which several organs would be superfluous or useless: in
such cases there would be retrogression in the scale of organization."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.161
"On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty; for natural selection,
or survival of the fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.162
"Although, organization on the whole, may have advanced and be still advancing throughout the world, yet the scale will
always present many degrees of perfection...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.163
"In no case, probably, has time sufficed for the utmost possible amount of development. In some few cases
there has been what we must call retrogression of organization. But the main cause lies in the fact that
under very simple conditions of life a high organization would be of no service, -- possibly would be of actual
disservice, as being of a more delicate nature, and more liable to be put out of order and injured."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.164
"...with organic beings we should bear in mind that the form of each depends on an infinitude of complex relations,
namely on the variations which have arisen, these being due to causes far too intricate to be followed out...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.165
"...I fully admit that the mutual relations of organic beings are more important; and as the number
of species in any country goes on increasing, the organic conditions of life must become more and more
complex."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.166
"When any species becomes very rare, close interbreeding will help to exterminate it...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.167
"...the great battle for life...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.170
"The direct action of changed conditions leads to definite or indefinite results. In the latter case
the organization seems to become plastic, and we have much fluctuating variability. In the former case
the nature of the organism is such that it yields readily, when subjected to certain conditions, all,
or nearly all the individuals become modified in the same way."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.173
"...innumerable instances are known to every naturalist, of species keeping true, or not varying at all. although living
under the most opposite climates."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.174
"From the facts alluded to in the first chapter, I think there can be no
doubt that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged
certain parts, and disuse diminished them; and that such modifications are
inherited. Under free nature we have no standard of comparison by which to
judge of the effects of long-continued use or disuse, for we know not the
parent-forms; but many animals possess structures which can be best
explained by the effects of disuse. As Professor Owen has remarked, there
is no greater anomaly in nature than a bird that cannot fly; yet there are
several in this state. The logger-headed duck of South America can only
flap along the surface of the water, and has its wings in nearly the same
condition as the domestic Aylesbury duck: it is a remarkable fact that the
young birds, according to Mr. Cunningham, can fly, while the adults have
lost this power. As the larger ground-feeding birds seldom take flight
except to escape danger, it is probable that the nearly wingless condition
of several birds, now inhabiting or which lately inhabited several oceanic
islands, tenanted by no beasts of prey, has been caused by disuse. The
ostrich indeed inhabits continents, and is exposed to danger from which it
cannot escape by flight, but it can defend itself, by kicking its enemies,
as efficiently as many quadrupeds. We may believe that the progenitor of
the ostrich genus had habits like those of the bustard, and that, as the
size and weight of its body were increased during successive generations,
its legs were used more and its wings less, until they became incapable of
flight."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.175
"The evidence that accidental mutilations can be inherited is at present not decisive; but the remarkable cases
observed by Brown-Sequard in guinea pigs, of the inherited effects of operations, should make us cautious
in denying this tendancy."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.176
"...several conditions make me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is mainly due to
the action of natural selection combined probably with disuse."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.177
"For when a new insect first arrived at the island, the tendency of natural selection to enlarge or to reduce the wings,
would depend on whether a greater number of individuals were saved by successfully battling with the winds,
or by giving up the attempt and rarely or never flying."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.177
"...I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less
severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of these dark abodes [caves] will have been exposed."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.181
"Habit is hereditary with plants, as in the period of flowering....
...we have evidence with some few plants, of their becoming, to a certain extent, naturally habituated to different
temperatures...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.181
"How much of the acclimatization of species to any peculiar climate is due to mere habit, and how much to the
natural selection of varieties having different innate constitutions, and how much to both means combined,
is an obscure question. That habit or custom has some influence, I must believe...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.183
"On the whole, we may conclude that habit, or use and disuse, have, in some cases, played a considerable part
in the modification of the constitution and structure; but that the effects have
often been largely combined with, and sometimes
overmastered by, the natural selection of innate variations.
Correlated Variation
I mean by this expression that the whole
organization is so tied together during its growth and
development, that when slight variations in any one part occur,
and are accumulated through natural selection, other parts
are modified. This is a very important subject...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.184
"Hence modification of structure, viewed by systematists as of high value, may be wholly due to the laws of variation
and correlation, without being, as far as we can judge, of the slightest service to the species."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.188
"...natural selection is continually trying to economise every part of the organization. ...it will
profit the individual not to have its nutriment wasted in building up an useless structure."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.189
"Rudimentary parts, as is generally admitted, are apt to be highly variable.
...I will here only add that their variability seems
to result from their uselessness, and consequently from natural selection having
no power to check deviations in their structure."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.191
"...species rarely endure for more than one geological period."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.195
"...the struggle between natural selection on the one hand, and the tendancy to reversion and variability
on the other hand, will in the course of time cease; and that the most abnormally developed organs
may be made constant, I see no reason to doubt."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.195
"...secondary sexual characters are highly variable."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.198
"...it is a very surprising fact that characters should reappear after having been lost for many,
probably hundreds of generations. ... When a character which has been lost in a breed, reappears after a
great number of generations, the most probable hypothesis is...that in each successive generation
the character in question has been lying latent....
... A mere tendency to produce a rudiment is indeed sometimes thus inherited."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.202
"Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.209
"Rudimentary organs, from being useless, are not regulated by natural selection, and hence are variable."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.210
"Although new and important modifications may not arise from reversion and analogous variation,
such modifications will add to the beautiful and harmonious diversity of nature."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.211
ON THE ABSENCE OR RARITY OF TRANSITIONAL VARIETIES.
"As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable
modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take
the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent-form
and other less-favoured forms with which it comes into competition. Thus
extinction and natural selection go hand in hand."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.213
"...both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very
process of formation and perfection of the new form."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.213
"To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined objects, and do not at any one period
present an inextricable chaos of varying and intermediate links...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.218
"It is, however, difficult to decide, and immaterial for us, whether habits generally change first
and the structure afterwards; or whether slight modifications of structure lead to changed habits; both
probably occurring almost simultaneously."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.224
"As we sometimes see individuals following habits different from those proper to their species and to
the other species of the same genus, we might expect that such individuals would occasionally give rise to
new species, having anomalous habits, and with their structure either slightly or considerably
modified from that of their type. And such instances occur in nature."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.224
"...habits have changed without a corresponding change in structure. The webbed feet of the goose
may be said to have become almost rudimentary in function, though not in structure. In the
frigate-bird...structure has begun to change."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.226
"...natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.232
"Many plants are known which regularly produce at the same time differently constructed flowers. ...
It is, however, probable that the two sorts of flowers borne by the same plant were originally
differentiated by finely graduated steps...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.233
"As two men have sometimes independently hit on the same invention, so in the several foregoing
cases it appears that natural selection, working for the good of each being...has produced similar organs...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.240
"Consequently natural selection would have had different materials or variations to work on, in order
to arrive at the same functional result; and the structures thus acquired would almost necessarily have differed."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.242
"...it is a common rule throughout nature that the same end should be gained...by the most diverse means."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.242
"The most ingenious man, if he had not witnessed what takes place, could never have imagined what purpose
all these parts serve."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.244
"Why on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little novelty?
... ...natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can
never take a great and sudden leap...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.247
"As natural selection acts by life and death, -- by the survival of the fittest, and by the destruction
of the less well-fitted individuals, -- I have sometimes felt great difficulty in understanding the origin or formation
of parts of little importance....
...we are much too ignorant in regard to the whole economy of any one organic being, to say what slight modifications
would be of importance or not."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.247
"Organs now of trifling importance have probably in some cases been of high importance to an earlier
progenitor, and, after having been slowly perfected at a former period, have been
transmitted to existing species in nearly the same state,
although now of very slight use; but any actually injurious deviations in their
structure would have been checked by natural selection."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.248
"...structures thus indirectly gained, although at first of no advantage to the species, may
subsequently have been taken advantage of by it modified descendants, under new conditions of life and newly acquired
habits."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.249
"...a few words on the protest lately made by some naturalists, against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail
of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor, They believe that many structures have been created for the sake of
beauty...or for the sake of mere variety, a view already discussed. Such doctrines, if true, would be fatal
to my theory. I fully admit that many structures are now of no direct use to their possessors, and
may never have been of any use to their progenitors; but this does not prove that they were formed solely
for beauty or variety.
...
...but with these important exceptions [external conditions, 'mutation', and the laws of growth], we may
conclude that the structure of every living creature either now is, or was formerly, of some direct or
indirect use to its possessor."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.251-253
"...the idea of what is beautiful, is not innate or unalterable."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.253
"...I willingly admit that a great number of male animals...have been rendered beautiful for beauty's
sake; but this has been effected through sexual selection, that is, the more beautiful males
having been continually preferred by the females, and not for the delight of man."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.254
"How the sense of beauty...was first developed in th mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very obscure
subject. ... Habit in all these cases appears to come into play; but there must be some fundamental cause
in the constitution of the nervous system in each species."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.255
"Natural selection will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being,
for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each.
...
Natural selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other
inhabitants of the same country with which it comes into competition. ... Natural selection will not
produce absolute perfection…."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.256
"We have seen that a species under new conditions of life may change its habits; or it may have
diversified habits...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.259
"The same organ having performed simultaneously very different functions...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.260
"...the common rule throughout nature is infinite diversity of structure for gaining the same end...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.260
"...we ought, in the first place, to be extremely cautious in pretending to decide what structures now are,
or have formerly been, of use to the species."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.267
"As these variations seem of no special use to the plants, they cannot have been influenced by natural selection.
Of their cause we are quite ignorant...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.272
"The acquisition of a useless part can hardly be said to raise an organism in the natural scale;
and in the case of the imperfect, closed flowers above described, if any new principle has to be invoked,
it must be one of retrogression rather than of progression; and so it is with many parasitic and degraded
animals."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.273
"Although we have no good evidence of the existence in organic beings of an innate tendency towards progressive
development, yet this necessarily follows...through the continued action of natural selection.
...parts have been specialized or differentiated, and...are thus enabled to perform their functions more efficiently."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.275
"...natural selection will preserve and thus separate all the superior individuals, allowing
them freely to intercross, and will destroy all the inferior individuals."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.278
"...the inherited effects of the increased use of parts...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.278
"Even if the fitting variations did arise, it does not follow that natural selection would be able to act on them,
and produce a structure which apparently would be beneficial to the species."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.280
"...natural selection is a slow process, and the same favourable conditions must long endure in order
that any marked effect should thus be produced."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.281
"Gradations of structure, with each stage beneficial to a changing species, will be favoured only under
certain peculiar conditions."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.281
"...there is nothing strange in a transition not having occurred in any particular case"
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.282
"...why, of two races of savages, one has risen higher in the scale of civilization than the other; and this
apparently implies increased brain-power"
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.282-283
"...the inherited effects of the increased use of parts, and perhaps of their disuse, will be strengthened
by natural selection."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.293
"...plants possess, in obedience to various stimuli, powers of movement, which are of manifest
importance to them.... ...they are excited in an incidental manner by touch, or by being shaken."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.307
"It has often been asked, if natural selection be so potent, why has not this or that structure been
gained by certain species, to which it would apparently have been advantageous? But it is
unreasonable to expect a precise answer to
such questions, considering our ignorance of the past history of each species, and of the
conditions which at the present day determine its numbers and range.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.310
"At the present day almost all naturalists admit evolution under some form.
...there is no need, as it seems to me, to invoke any internal force beyond the tendancy to ordinary variability,
which through the aid of selection by man...and...natural selection would equally give rise by graduated
steps to natural races or species. The final result will generally have been...an advance, but in some
few cases a retrogression, in organization."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.311
...must be called monstrosities, such as six fingered men...Ancon sheep...they throw very little light
on our subject.
... If such occurred under nature, they would be liable, as formally explained, to be lost by
accidental causes of destruction and by subsequent intercrossing; and so it is known under domestication....
...in order that a new species should suddenly appear...it is almost neccessary to believe, in
opposition to all analogy, that several wonderfully changed individuals appeared simultaneously
within the same district. This difficulty...is avoided on the theory of gradual evolution...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.312-313
"I will not attempt any definition of instinct.
... An action...when performed by many individuals in the same way, without their
knowing for what purpose it is performed, is usually said to be instinctive. But I could show that
none of these characters are universal. A little dose of judgement or reason,
as Pierre Huber expresses it, often comes into play, even in animals low in the scale of nature"
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.317-318
"...instinct with habit. This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of the frame of mind
under which an instinctive action is performed, but not necessarily of its origin. How unconsciously many
habitual actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious will! yet they
may be modified by the will or reason. ... When once acquired, they often remain constant throughout life.
... As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm;
if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back
to recover the habitual train of thought...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.318
"If we suppose an habitual action to become inherited--and it can be shown that this does sometimes happen--
then the resemblance between what was originally habit and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.319
"As modifications of corporeal structures arise from, and are increased by, use or habit, and are diminished or
lost by disuse, so I do not doubt it has been with instincts."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.319
"I can only assert that instincts certainly do vary--for instance,
the migratory instinct, both in extent and direction, and in
its total loss."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.322
"That the mental qualities of animals of the same kind, born in a state of nature, vary much.... I can only
repeat my assurance, that I do not speak without good evidence."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.323
"...natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight modifications of structure or instinct, each
profitable to the individual under its conditions of life...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.348
"As with the varieties of the stock, so with social insects, selection has been applied to the family, and
not to the individual, for the sake of gaining a serviceable end."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.354
"...one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings,--namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest
live and the weakest die."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.360
"Hence it seems that, on the one hand, slight changes in the conditions of life benefit
all organic beings, and on the other
hand, that slight crosses, that is crosses between males and females of the same species,
which have been subjected to slightly different
conditions, or which have slightly varied, give vigor and fertility to the offspring.
... He who is able to explain why the elephant and a multitude of other animals are incapable of breeding
when kept under only partial confinement in their native country, will be able to explain
the primary cause of hybrids being
so generally sterile. he will at the same time be able to explain how it is that the races of some
of our domesticated animals, which have often been subjected to new and not uniform conditions,
are quite fertile together, although they are descended from distinct species, which would probably
have been sterile if originally crossed. The above two parallel series of facts seem to be connected together by some common but
unknown bond, which is essentially related to the principle of life; this principle, according to Mr.
Herbert Spencer, being that life depends on, or consists in, the incessant action and reaction of various fores, which
throughout nature, are always tending towards an equilibrium...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.386-387
"...there must be some essential distinction between species and varieties... ...the subject is surrounded by
difficulties...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.392
"The real difficulty in our present subject is not, as it appears to me, why domestic varieties have not become mutually infertile
when crossed, but why this has so generally occurred with natural varieties, as soon as they
have been permanently modified in sufficient degree to take the rank of species."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.394
"...we may conclude that fertility does not constitute a fundamental distinction between
varieties and species when crossed."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.397
"If we ask ourselves why this or that species is rare, we answer that something is unfavourable in its
conditions of life; but what that something is we can hardly ever tell."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.451
"We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in
imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the existence of
each species depends."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.454
"To attempt to compare members of distinct types in the scale of highness seems hopeless; who will decide...?
... Besides these inherent difficulties in deciding which forms are the most advanced in organization, we ought
not solely to compare the highest members of a class at any two periods...but we ought to compare all members, high and low,
at the two periods. ... We ought also to compare the relative proportional numbers at any two periods of the
high and low classes throughout the world.... ... We thus see how hopelessly difficult it is to compare with perfect
fairness under such extremely complex relations, the standards of organization of the imperfectly-known faunas of
successive periods."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.471-472
"Inhabitants of the world at each successive period in its history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life,
and are, in so far, higher in the scale, and their structure has generally become more specialised; and this may account
for the common belief held by so many paleontologists, that organization on the whole has progressed."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.480
"Undoubtedly, if one species has any advantage over another, it will in a very brief time wholly
or in part supplant it; but if both are equally well fitted for their own places,
both will probably hold their separate places for almost any length of time."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.541
"From the most remote period in the history of the world organic beings have been found to
resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups within groups. This classification is not
arbitrary like the groupings of the stars in constellations."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.551
"No doubt organic beings, like all other objects, can be classed in many ways.... But with organic beings the case is
different...their natural arrangement [is] in group under group; no other explanation has ever been attempted."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.553
"I believe that the arrangement of the groups within each class...must be strictly
genealogical in order to be
natural...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.561
"As we have no written pedigrees, we are forced to trace community of descent by resemblances of any kind."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.565
"We shall never, probably, disentangle the inextricable web of the affinities between members of any one class...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.578
"Rudimentary organs plainly declare their origin and meaning in various ways.
... Rudimentary organs sometimes retain their potentiality...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.601
"It is, however, often difficult to distinguish between rudimentary and nascent organs...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.603
"It is an important fact that rudimentary organs, such as teeth in the upper jaws of whales and
ruminants, can often be detected in the embryo, but afterwards wholly disappear."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.604
"In works of natural history, rudimentary organs are generally said to have been created "for the sake
of symmetry," or in order "to complete the scheme of nature." But this is not an explanation, merely a re-statement
of the fact."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.605
"It appears probable that disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.606
"It is scarcely possible that disuse can go on producing any further effect after the organ has once been
rendered functionless. Some additional explanation is here requisite which I cannot give."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.608
"What limit can be put to this power [of natural selection towards]...favouring the good and rejecting the bad?"
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.624
"We can see why throughout nature the same general end is gained by an almost infinite diversity of means....
...nature is prodigal in variety, though niggard in innovation."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.626
"As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the inhabitants of each country
only in relation to their co-inhabitants; so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country,
although on the ordinary view supposed to have been created and specially adapted for that country,
being beaten and supplanted by the naturalized productions of another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all
the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect....
... The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want
of absolute perfecting have not been detected."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.627-628
"...when varieties enter any new station, they occasionally assume some of the characters proper to
the species of that station."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.628
"With both varieties and species, reversion to long lost characters occasionally occur."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.629
"Habit no doubt often comes into play in modifying instincts; but it certainly is not indispensible...."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.630
"It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does
the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. It
has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method used in judging
of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.637
"Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form
of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked
with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from the point of view
directly opposite to mine. ... A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who
have already begun to doubt the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but
I look with confidence to the future,-- to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view
both sides impartially."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.639
"I formally spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and never once met with any sympathy."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.641
"Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants
are descended from some one prototype."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.642
"The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler when we have a definite object in view."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.645
"Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that
of the neccessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.647
"Hence we ay look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works
solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend
to progress towards perfection."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.648
"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object
which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows.
There is grandeur in this view of life...forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,
and are being evolved"
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.648
1998 Modern Library Paperback Edition
First Edition 1859
Sixth Edition 1872
On the Origin of Species
The origin of species by means of natural selection, or, the preservation
of favoured races in the struggle for life.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.
THOMAS HARDY
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, "And thus Henchard found
himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied
a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another
start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half
formed state had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods
for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum -- which arranges that wisdom to do
shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing -- stood in the way of all that. He had
no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him." p.319
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, "She was fairly happy, and I never would have undeceived her
till the day of her death. ... A time came...when somebody she had confided her history to, told her my claim
to her was a mockery, and made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never happy with me." p.292
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, "...her interest in the spectacle
of the strange phenomenon got the better of her fear." p.266
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, "Every trifling emotion that her
husband showed as he talked had its reflex on her face and lips, which moved
as little duplicates to his." p.265
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge,"'A good laugh warms the heart more
than a cordial, and that's the truth on't'". p.261
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge,"He had married money, but nothing more. Henchard was anxious
to wash his hands of the game." p.251
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge,"He revised impressions from a subsequent point of view, and the
impulsive judgement of the moment was not always his permanent one." p.240
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge,"...that chaos called consciousness...." p.121
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge,"But nothing is more insidious then the evolution
of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes." p.98
JOHAN HUIZINGA
"...play is to be understood here not as a biological phenomenon but as a
cultural phenomenon....
I have made next to no use of any psychological interpretations
of play, however important these may be.....
...the supreme importance to civilization of the play-factor." from 1938 forward.
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Animals play just like men." p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...play is more than a mere physiological function or a psychological reflex.
....It is a significant function - that is to say there is some sense to it. In play
there is somthing 'at play' which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts
meaning to the action. All play means something.
If we call the active principle that makes up the essense of
play, 'instinct', we explain nothing: if we call it 'mind' or 'will' we say too much.
...the very fact that play has a meaning implies a non-materialistic quality in the nature of the thing
itself." p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"All (past play) ...hypothesis have one thing in common: they all start from
the assumption that play must serve something which is not play, that it must have some
kind of biological purpose. ...If any of them were really decisive it ought either to
exclude all the others or comprehend them in a higher unity. ...its profoundly aesthetic
quality. " p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
" ...this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence,
the primordial quality of play. (Nature gave us play) "
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens p.3
"...it is precisely this fun-element which characterizes the essence of play. ....since the
reality of play extends beyond the sphere of human life, it cannot have its foundations
in any rational nexus, because that would limit it to mankind.
"Any thinking person can
see at a glance that play is a thing on its own, even if his language possesses no general
concept to express it."
...in acknowledging play you acknowledge mind, for whatever else play is, it is not
matter."
p.3
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"......a world wholly determined by the operation of blind forces, play would be
altogether superfluous. ...an influx of mind breaks down the absolute determinism of the cosmos.
...play is irrational. ....We find play
present everywhere as a well-defined quality of action which is different from 'ordinary'
life. ...We shall not look for the natural impulses and habits conditioning play in general,
but shall consider play in its manifold concrete forms as itself a social construction " p.4
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilization." p.5
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The more we try to mark off the form we call 'play' from other forms apparently related to it,
the more the absolute independance of the play-concept stands out". p.7
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Many and close are the links that connect play with beauty." p.7
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The play-concept must always be distinct from all the other forms of thought in
which we express the structure of mental and social life". p.7
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"It must be objected that this freedom does not exist for the animal and the child; they
must play because their instinct drive them to do it and because it serves to develop
their bodily faculties and their powers of selection.
The term 'instinct', however, introduces an unknown quantity, and to presuppose the utility of
play from the start is to be guilty of petitio principii. Child and animal play
because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely
lies their freedom.
Be that as it may, for the adult and responsible human being play is a
function which he could equally well leave alone. Play is superfluous. The need for it is only
urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes it a need. ...
Here, then, we have the
first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. A second characteristic
is ... ..that play is not 'ordinary' or 'real' life. " p.8
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
" ...the consciousness of play being 'only a pretend' does not by any means prevent it
from proceeding with the utmost seriousness.....Any game can at any time wholly run away
with the players. .... It (play) thus has its place in a sphere superior to the strictly
biological processes of nutrition, reproduction, and self-preservation." (then argues against
sexual selection alternative ideas) p.9
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...the purposes it serves are external to the immediate material interests or the individual
satisfaction of biological needs.
Play is distinct form 'ordinary' life both as to locality and duration. This is the third main characteristic
of play: its secludedness, its limitedness. It is 'played out' within certain limits of time and place.
It contains its
own course and meaning.
...Once played, it endures as a new-found creation of the mind, a treasure to be retained by the memory. " p.10
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. Into an
imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings temporary perfection. Play demands order
absolute and supreme. The least deviation from the 'spoils of the game', robs it of its character,
and makes it worthless.
Play casts a spell over us; it is 'enchanting', 'captivating'.
...all want to achieve something difficult, to succeed, to end tension. Play is 'tense', as we say.
...the more play bears the character of competition, the more fervent it will be.
...the element of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it means a testing of the player's
prowess; his courage, tenacity, resources, and, last but not least, his spiritual powers --
his 'fairness'; because, despite his
ardent desire to win, he must stick to the rules of the game." p.11
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"All play has its rules.
The rules of the game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt.
...as the rules of the game are transgressed the whole play-world collapses. The game is over.
It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to .11 the spoil-sport. This
is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself.
...the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sports,
here called apostates, heretics,
innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. " p.12
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"A play-community generally tends to become permanent even after the game is over.
Inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count.
" p.13
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Summing up the formal characteristics of play, we might call it a free activity
standing quite consciously outside
'ordinary' life as being 'not serious', but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.
It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. " p.14
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Forbenius is right to discard the facile hypothesis which contents itself with
hypothecating an innate 'play instinct',. The term 'instinct'
he says, is 'a makeshift, an admission of helplessness before the problem of 'reality'. " p.17
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The child plays in complete -- we can well say, in sacred -- earnest. But it plays and knows it plays." p.19
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The player can abandon himself body and soul to the game, and the consciousness of its being 'merely' a game
can be thrust into the background.
At any moment 'ordinary life' may reassert its rights...."p.22
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...(play involves) the consciousness that it is 'different' from 'ordinary life' .
We ventured to call the catagory 'play' one of the most fundamental in life." part 2 p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning. Even those
activities which aim at the immediate satisfaction of vital needs - hunting, for instance - tend,
in archaic society, to take on the play-form. ... It is through this playing that society expresses
its interpretation of life and the world.
....culture emerges from play. " part 3, p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...at any moment, even in a highly developed civilization, the play-'instinct' may reassert
itself in full force, drowning the individual and the mass in the intoxication of an immense game.
Part 3, p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...games of pure chance.... ..are sterile, adding nothing to life or the mind..." Part 3, p.3
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Like all other forms of play, the contest is largely devoid of purpose. That is to say, the
action begins and ends in itself, and the outcome does not contribute to the life-necessary processes
of the group. The popular Dutch saying to the effect that 'it is not the marbles that matter but
the game', expresses this clearly enough. Objectively speaking, the result of the game is
unimportant and a matter of indifference." Part 3, p.4
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Contest means play." Part 4, p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The lawsuit can be regarded [as play] as a game of chance. a contest, or a verbal battle." Part 4, p.3
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...all fighting that is bound by rules bears the formal characteristics
of play by that very limitation." Part 5, p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"It remained for the theory of 'total war' to banish war's cultural function and extinguish the last
vestige of the play-element." Part 5, p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"A theory designed to explain the origin of plastic art in terms of an innate
'play instinct' (Spieltrieb) was propounded long ago by Schiller.
An almost instinctive, spontaneous need to
decorate things cannot, indeed, be denied; and may conveniently be called a play-function." Part 10, p.9
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Roman society could not live without games. They were as necessary to its existence as bread...." Part 11, p.6.
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...we should remember that this precarious balance between seriousness and pretence in an unmistakable
and integral part of culture as such...." Part 11, p.21
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"When combat has an ethical value it ceases to be play." Part 12, p.16
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
"A myth is a speeded up following of a process. We live mythically ourselves...."
Marshall McLuhan
"The young do not suffer from a hardening of the categories."
Marshall McLuhan
"We were looking for universal laws and we found them, only four that everything does...."
"The laws of the media are quite simply this. That every medium exaggerates some function....
they obsolesss another function. They retrieve a much older function, and they flip into the opposite form."
Marshall McLuhan
MURRAY GELL-MANN
"…any complex adaptive system has evolved to discover patterns and so a pattern is in a sense its own
reward." The Quark and the Jaguar(1994), Murray Gell-Mann p. 296
THOMAS KUHN
"Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles
upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within
the existing scientific tradition." Thomas Kuhn, Tension .234
...'paradigms.' These I take to be universally recognized scientific achievements that
for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. Preface, third ed., p.x
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1996
"...my most fundamental objective is to urge a change in the perception and evaluation of
familiar data...." p.x
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the emergence of the crises that may be induced by repeated failure to make
an anomaly conform." p.xi
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there are circumstances, though I think them rare, under which two paradigms can
coexist peacefully in the later period." p.xi
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"I think they will be wrong, but this essay is not calculated to convince them. To
attempt that would require a far longer and very different sort of book." p.xii
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or
caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature
were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than
those current today." p.2
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the man who is ignorant of these fields but who knows what it is to be scientific
may legitimately reach any one of a number of incompatible conclusions. Among those legitimate
possibilities, the particular conclusions he does arrive at are probably determined by his prior
experience in other fields, by the accidents of his investigation, and by his own individual makeup." p4
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What differentiated these various schools was not one or another failure of method-they were
all scientific-but what we shall come to call their incommensurable ways of seeing the world and of
practicing science in it. ... An apparently arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical
accident, is always a formative ingredient...." p4
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"When examining normal science ...we shall want finally to describe that research as a
strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into conceptual boxes supplied by professional
education. Simultaneously, we shall wonder whether research could proceed without such boxes...." p.5
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the very nature of normal research ensures that novelty shall not be suppressed for very long." p.5
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...Maxwell's equations were as revolutionary as Einstein's, and they were resisted
accordingly. The invention of other new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same
response from some of the specialists on whose area of special competence they impinge. For
these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of normal
science. Inevitably, therefore, it reflects upon much scientific work they have already
completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or
never just an increment to what is already known." p.7
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...shifted the network of theory through which it deals with the world." p.7
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Competition between segments of the scientific community is the only historical process
that ever actually results in the rejection of one previously accepted theory or in the adoption
of another." p.8
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...many of my generalizations are about sociology or social psychology of scientists:
yet at least a few of my conclusions belong traditionally to logic or epistemology." p.8
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...'the context of discovery' and ' the context of justification'...." p.8
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of
adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently
open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.
Achievements that share these two characteristics I shall henceforth refer to as 'paradigms,' a
term that relates closely to 'normal science." p.10
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there can be a sort a sort of scientific research without paradigms, or at least without
any so unequivocal and so binding as the ones names above." p.11
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous.
... In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for a paradigm, all of the facts that could
possibly pertain to the development of a give science are likely to seem equally relevant. ... Furthermore, in
the absence of a reason for seeking some particular form of recondite information, early fact-gathering is
usually restricted to the wealth of data that lie ready to hand." p.15
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...it produces a morass. One somehow hesitates to call the literature that results scientific.
The Baconian 'histories' of heat, color, wind, mining, and so on, are filled with information.... ...that
will for some time remain too complex to be integrated with theory at all." p16
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"No natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of
intertwined theoretical and methodological belief.... If that body of belief is not already
implicit...it must be externally supplied...." p.16-17
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it
need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted." p.17-18
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the confidence they were on the right track encouraged scientists to undertake more precise,
esoteric,and consuming sorts of work. ... Both fact collection and theory articulation became highly
directed activities." p.18
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Francis Bacon's acute methodological dictum: 'Truth emerges more readily from error than
from confusion'." p.18 op cit p.210.
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Their disappearance is caused by their members' conversion to the new paradigm. But there
are always some men who cling to one or another of the older views, and they are simply read out
of the profession, which thereafter ignores their work." p.18-19
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"In dynamics, research became similarly esoteric in the later middle ages, and it recaptured
general intelligibility only briefly during the early seventeenth century when a new paradigm
replaced the one that had guide medieval research." p.20
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise, an
actualization achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the
paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of
the match between those facts and the paradigms predictions, and by further
articulation of the paradigm itself.
...mop-up work of this sort....
Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers.
They constitute what I am here calling normal science. ...the enterprise seems an
attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the
paradigm supplies. ...those that will not fit the box will often not be seen at
all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often
intolerant of those invented by others" p.24
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"And normal science possesses a built in mechanism that ensures the relaxation of
the restrictions that bound research whenever the paradigm from which the derive
ceases to function effectively." p.24
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there are seldom many areas in which a scientific theory, particularly if it
is cast in predominantly mathematical form, can be directly compared with nature." p.26
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The existence of the paradigm sets the problem to be solved: often the paradigm
theory is implicated directly in the design of the apparatus able to solve
the problem." p.27
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Often a paradigm developed for one set of phenomenon is ambiguous in its
application to other closely related ones."
p.29
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"These are manipulations of theory undertaken, not because the predictions
in which they result are intrinsically valuable, but because they can be
confronted directly with experiment."
p.30
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"To derive those laws, Newton had been forced to neglect all gravitational
attraction except that between individual planets and the sun."
p.32
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the enthusiasm and devotion that scientists display for the problems of
normal research. ... The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle-solver,
and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on.
... Puzzles are, in the entirely standard meaning here employed, that special
catagory of problems that can serve to test ingenuity or skill in solution."
p.36
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the really pressing problems,e.g., a cure for cancer or the design of a
lasting peace, are often not puzzles at all, largely because they may not have a solution."
p.36-37
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"A paradigm can...even insulate the community from those socially
important problems that are not reducible to the puzzle form...." p.37
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third Edition
"What then challenges him is the conviction that...he will succeed in solving a
puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. ... On most occasions
any particular field of specialization offers nothing else to do, a fact that
makes it no less fascinating to the proper sort of addict."
p.38
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"If it is to classify as a puzzle, a problem must be characterized by more than
an assured solution. There must also be rules that limit both the nature of
acceptable solutions and the steps by which they are to be obtained. "
p.38
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...those scientists who tried to derive the observed motion of the moon from
Newton's laws...failed.... ...one of them discovered how.... Only a change
in the rules of the game could have provided an alternative."
p.39-40
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...instrumental commitments that...provide scientists with rules of the game."
p.41
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Rules, I suggest, derive from paradigms, but paradigms can guide research even in the absence of rules."
p.42
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the existence of a paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exists." p.44
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, though in a very different context. Because that context...." p.44
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What need we know, Wittgenstein asked, in order that we apply terms like 'chair', or 'leaf', or 'game'
unequivocally and without provoking argument?
That question is very old and has generally been answered by saying that we must know, consciously or
intuitively, what a chair, or leaf, or game is. We must, that is, grasp some set of attributes that all games
and that only games have in common. Wittgenstein, however, concluded that, given the way we use language
and the sort of world to which we apply it, there need be no such set of characteristics.
Though a discussion of some of the attributes shared by a number of games or chairs of leaves often
helps us learn how to employ the corresponding term, there is no set of characteristics that is simultaneously
applicable to all members of the class and to them alone. Instead, confronted with a previously unobserved
activity, we apply the term 'game' because what we are seeing bears a close 'family resemblance' to a number
of the activities that we have previously learned to call by that name. For Wittgenstein, in short
games, and chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and
crisscrossed resemblances. The existence of such a network sufficiently accounts for our success in identifying
the corresponding object or activity." p.44-45
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the severe difficulty of discovering the rules that have guided particular normal-scientific traditions.
That difficultly is very nearly the same as the one the philosopher encounters when he tries to say what all games
have in common." p.46
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...problems assigned to him become more complex and less completely precedented. But they continue to be closely
modeled on previous achievements as are the problems that normally occupy him during his subsequent independent scientific
career. One is at liberty to suppose that somewhere along the way the scientist has intuitively abstracted
rules of the game for himself, but there is little reason to believe it. ...hypothetical rules of the game." p.47
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...granting paradigms a status prior to that of shared rules and assumptions...." p.49
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Presumably both men were talking of the same particle, but they were viewing it through their own research training and
practice." p.50-51
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"That is what fundamental novelties of fact and theory do. Produced inadvertently by a game played under one set of
rules, their assimilation requires the elaboration of another set." p.52
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...X-rays, is a classic case of discovery through accident, a type that occurs more frequently than the impersonal
standards of scientific reporting allow us easily to realize." p.57
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Previously completed work on normal projects would now have to be done again because earlier scientists had failed
to recognize and control a relevant variable." p.59
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Paradigm procedures and applications...paradigm laws and theories...have the same effects.
Inevitably they restrict
the phenomenological field accessible for scientific investigation at any given time." p.60-61
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"'I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't look like a card that time.... I'm not even sure
now what a spade looks like. My God!' ...we shall occasionally see scientists behaving this way too." p63-64
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty,
manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially, only
the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be observed."
p.64
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Without the special apparatus that is constructed mainly for anticipated functions, that
results that lead ultimately to novelty could not occur. ... Anomaly appears only against the
background provided by the paradigm."
p.65
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there was no obvious reasons for taking Aristarchus seriously. Even Copernicus' more
elaborate proposal was neither simpler nor more accurate than Ptolemy's system."
p.75
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical
construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. ... ...invention
of alternatives is just what scientists seldom undertake except during the pre-paradigm stage...."
p.76
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"...once it has achieved the status of a paradigm, a scientific theory is declared
invalid only is an alternate candidate is available to take its place."
p.77
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"...what we have already seen scientists doing when confronted by anomaly. They
will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory....
From within a new theory of scientific knowledge, they [anomalies] may seem very much like
tautologies [obvious]....
It has often been observed, for example, that Newton's second
law of motion, though it took centuries of difficult factual and theoretical research to
achieve, behaves for those committed to Newton's theory very much like a purely logical
statement that no amount of observation could refute."
p.78
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself."
p.79
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"...no paradigm that provides a basis for scientific research ever completely resolves all
its problems. The very few that have ever seemed to do so (e.g. , geometric optics) have
shortly ceased to yield research problems at all and have instead become tools for engineering."
p.79
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"There are always some discrepancies. Even the most stubborn ones usually respond at last to normal practice." p.81
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The scientist who pauses to examine every anomaly he notes will seldom get significant work done.
We therefore have to ask what it is that makes an anomaly seem worth concerted scrutiny, and to that question
there is probably no fully general answer." p.82
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...since no experiment can be conceived without some sort of theory, the scientists in crisis will
constantly try to generate speculative theories...." p.87
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers. Indeed, normal science usually
holds creative philosophy at arm's length, and probably for good reasons." p.88
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Nor it is an accident that in both these periods the so-called thought experiment should have
played so critical a role in the progress of research. As I have shown elsewhere, the analytical thought experimentation
that bulks so large in the writings of Galileo, Einstein, Bohr, and others is perfectly
calculated to expose the old paradigm to existing knowledge in ways that isolate the root of the crisis with
a clarity unattainable in the laboratory." p.88
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...these are men who, being little committed by prior practice to traditional rules of normal science,
are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive
another set that can replace them." p.90
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"We are about to discover that a similar circularity is characteristic of scientific theories." p.90
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their
role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense.
The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments wrong or even ineffectual.
...Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that
of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or
even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle." p.94
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of
scientists regularly to select problems
that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence. (That is
why an excessive concern with useful problems, regardless of their relation to existing knowledge
and technique, can so easily inhibit scientific development.)" p.96
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Though an out-of-date theory can always be viewed as a special case of its up-to-date
successor, it must be transformed for the purpose." p.102-103
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"As the problems change, so, often, does the standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from mere
metaphysical speculation, word game, or mathematical play. The normal-science tradition that emerges
from scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has
gone before." p.103
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What occurred was neither a decline nor a raising of standards, but simply a change demanded
by the adoption of a new paradigm. furthermore that change has since been reversed and could be again." p.108
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...since nature is too complex and varied to be explored at random...." p.109
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in
places they have looked before." p.111
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...gestalt experiments illustrate only the nature of perceptual transformations. ...
...work of the Hanover Institute. An experimental subject who puts on goggles fitted with inverting lenses
initially sees the entire world upside down. ... But as the subject has begun to learn to deal with his new world, his
entire visual field flips over, usually after an intervening period in which vision is simply confused." p.112
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual
experience has taught him to see." p.113
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...is not one that resembles interpretation. How could it do so in the absence of fixed data for the scientist
to interpret?" p.122
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Science does not deal in all possible laboratory manipulations. ...scientists with different paradigms engage in
different concrete laboratory manipulations." p.126
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The duck-rabbit shows that two men with the same retinal impressions can see different things; the inverting lenses
show that two men with different retinal impressions can see the same thing." p.126-127
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"In short, they [textbooks] have to be rewritten in the aftermath of each new scientific revolution, and,
once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that
produced them." p.137
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"More historical detail...could only give artificial status to human idiosyncrasy, error, and confusion. Why
dignify what science's best and most persistent efforts have made it possible to discard?" p.138
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Those theories, of course, do 'fit the facts', but only by transforming previously accessible information into facts
that, for the preceding paradigm, had not existed at all. And that means that theories too do not
evolve piecemeal to fit facts that were there all the time." p.141
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Like time, energy, force, or particle, the concept of an element is the sort of textbook ingredient that is often not
invented or discovered at all. ... It follows that concepts like that of an element can scarcely be
invented independent of context. Furthermore, given the context, they rarely require invention because
they are already at hand." p.142
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Any new interpretation of nature, whether a discovery or a theory, emerges first in the mind
of one or a few individuals. It is they
who first learn to see science and the world differently.... ...usually, in addition, they are men so young or
so new the crisis-ridden field that practice has committed them less deeply...." p.144
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"These trial attempts, whether by the chess player or by the scientist, are trial only of themselves, not
the rules of the game." p144-145
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"few philosophers of science still seek absolute criteria for the verification of scientific theories." p.145
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Verification is like natural selection; it picks out the most viable among the actual alternatives in
a particular historical situation. Whether that choice is the best that could have been made if still other
alternatives had been made available or if the data had been of another sort is not a question that can
be usefully asked." p.146
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...[re Popper]anomalous experiences may not be identified with falsifying ones. Indeed, I doubt
that the latter exist. ... If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all theories
ought to be rejected at all times." p.146
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial." p.149
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...we have been calling a paradigm shift. ... Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though
not necessarily in an instant) or not at all." p.150
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Copernicanism made few converts for almost a century after Copernicus' death. Newton's...for more
than half a century...." p.150
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Though a generation is sometimes required to effect the change, scientific communities have again and again been
converted to new paradigms." p.152
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Though some scientists, particularly older and more experienced ones, may resist indefinitely, most of them can be
reached in one way or another. Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after
the last holdouts have died...." p.152
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the question of the nature of scientific argument has no single or uniform answer. Individual scientists
embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and usually for several at once." p.152
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Because scientists are reasonable men, one or another argument will ultimately persuade many of them." p.158
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"To a very great extent the term 'science' is reserved for fields that do progress in obvious ways."
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...whether of scientists or of non-scientists, the result of successful creative work is progress. How could
it be possibly be anything else?" p.162
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"One of the strongest, if still unwritten, rules of scientific life is the prohibition of appeals to
heads of state or to the populace at large in matters scientific. ... The groups members...must be seen as the
sole possessors of the rules of the game...." p.168
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Nothing important to my argument depends, however, on crisis' being an absolute prerequisite to revolutions;
they need only be the usual prelude...." p.181
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...definitions, being tautologies...." p.183
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...the resort to shared values rather than to shared rules governing individual choice may be the community's way
of distributing risk and assuring the long-term success of its enterprise. "
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"Scientists solve puzzles by modeling them on previous puzzle-solutions...." p.189
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...members...learn to see the same things when confronted with the same stimuli...by
being shown examples of situations that their predecessors in the group have already learned to see as like
each other and as different from other sorts of situations." p.193-194
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"These are all deliberative processes, and in them we do seek and deploy criteria and rules.
...
An appropriately programmed perceptual mechanism has survival value. ...
In many environments a group that could not tell wolves from dogs could not endure." p.195
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...the superiority
of one theory to another is something that cannot be proved in the debate". p.198
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...such reasons function as values...." p.199
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"There is no neutral algorithm for theory-choice" p.200
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"Like any other value, puzzle-solving ability proves equivocal in application." p.205
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in often
quite different environments to which they are applied. This is not a relativist's position, and it displays
the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress." p.206
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"There is, i think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between
the ontology of a theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle." p.206
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"'Is' and 'ought' are by no means always so separate as they have seemed." p.207
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"A number...read its main thesis as applicable to many other fields as well. I see what they mean and would not
like to discourage their attempts to extend the position...." p.208
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...whatever progress itself may be." p.209
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
NEIL POSTMAN
"...once a technology is admitted, it plays out it's hand; it does what it is designed to do."
Technopoly p.7
"The old words...do not have the same meanings...technology imperiously
commandeers our most important terminology. It redefines 'freedom', 'truth'...."
Technopoly p.8
"...the benefits and deficits of a new technology are not distibuted equally.
There are, as it were, winners and losers."
Technopoly p.9
"...the changes wrought by technology are subtle if not downright mysterious, one might even
say wildly unpredictable." Technopoly p.12
"To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image"
Technopoly p.14
"Unforseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see
clearly the direction in which a new technology will take us . Not even those
who invent a technology can be assumed to be reliable prophets...."
Technopoly p.15
"New technologies alter the structure of our interests; the things we
think about. They alter the character of our symbols; the things
we think with. They alter the nature of community; the arena in which
thoughts develope." Technopoly
p.20
"...technologies create the ways in which people percieve reality... "
Technopoly
p.21
"...a theology or metaphysics provides order and meaning to existence...." Technopoly p.26
"...no taxonomy ever neatly fits the realities of the situation...." Technopoly p.28
"Their (Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo) search for the mathematical laws of nature
was, fundamentally, a religious quest." Technopoly p.34
"...(Technopoly is) what cannot be measured either does not exist or is
of no value...." Technopoly p.51
"...telegraphy created the idea of context-free information -- that is, the idea that the value
of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political
decision making and action." Technopoly p.67
"Information had become a form of garbage...." Technopoly p.69
"It is a world in which the idea of human progress...has been replaced
by the idea of technological progress." Technopoly p.70
"When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown
in psychic tranquillity and social purpose occurs."
Technopoly p.72
"...any educational system...must have a theory about its purpose and meaning,
must have the means to give clear expression to its theory, and must do so, to a large extent,
by excluding information."
Technopoly p.75
"That is the function of theories -- to oversimplify...."
Technopoly p.77
RICHARD DAWKINS
"Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is the better alternative. Indeed,
design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who
is the designer? Chance and design both fail as mutual solutions to the problem of statistical
improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other regresses to it. Natural selection
is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested.
...natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks down the problem of improbability up into small
pieces." p.121
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all.
Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height." p.123
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...the origin of life was (or could have been) a unique event which had to happen only once. The adaptive
fit of species to their separate environments, on the other hand, is million fold, and ongoing." p.139
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"We can safely predict that, if we wait another ten million years, a whole new set of species will be
as well adapted to their ways of life as today's species are to theirs." p.140
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...natural selection and its power to tame improbability. J. Anderson Thomson, from his perspective as
an evolutionary psychiatrist, points me to an additional reason [for the general blindness
of people to the fact that
god is unexplained], the psychological bias that we all have towards
personifying inanimate objects as agents." p.143
the
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a misery accountant, grudging the pennies,
watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance. ...If a wild animal habitually
performs some useless activity, natural selection will favour rival individuals who devote
the time and energy, instead, to surviving and reproducing." p.163
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"But uncertainty as to details doesn't -- nor should it -- stop Darwinians from presuming, with
great confidence....
Richard Lewontin: 'That is the one point which I think all evolutionists are agreed upon,
that it is virtually impossible
to do a better job that an organism is doing in its own environment.'...." p.164
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"By benefit, the Darwinian normally means some enhancement to the survival of the individuals's genes." p.165
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...religious behavior may be misfiring, an unfortunate by-product of an underlying psychological
propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful.[a trust module]" p.174
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Natural selection builds child brains with a tendancy to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
... An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad." p.176
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for
example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for
discriminating in favour of in-group members and against strangers." p.179
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"The general theory of religion as an accidental by-product --
a misfiring of something useful -- is the one I wish to advocate." p.188
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Biologists acknowledge that a gene may spread through a population not because it is good gene
but simply because it is a lucky one. We call this genetic drift." p.189
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"And how do they compete? Not by direct molecule-to-molecule combat but by proxy. The proxies are their
'phenotypic traits' -- things like leg length or fur colour.... As generations go by, genes increase
or decrease in frequency in the gene pool by virtue of their phonotypic proxies." p.192
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"We could investigate the phenomenon [of memes] more systematically by the following experiement:
a varient of the game of Chinese Whispers. ...
I haven't done the experiment yet (I'd like to), but I have a strong prediction of what the result
will be." p.194
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"My original purpose in advocating memes, indeed, was to counter the impression that the gene
was the only Darwinian game in town -- an impression that The Selfish Gene was otherwise at
risk of conveying." p.196
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Genes, then, co-operate in cartels to build bodies. ... What really happens is that the other genes
of the gene pool constitute a major part of the environment in which the gene is selected versus its
alleles." p.197
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"One vowel shifted first, for reasons unknown -- perhaps some fashionable imitation of an admired or powerful
individual, as is alleged to be the origin of the Spanish lisp." p.198
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Some religious ideas, like some genes, might survive because of absolute merit. These
memes would survive in any memes pool, regardless of the other memes that surround them." p.199
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...[art, religion, etc.] Some of the above listed probably have absolute survival value
and would flourish in any memeplex." p.200
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"In the early stages of a religions of a religion's evolution, before it becomes organized, simple memes survive
by virtue of their universal appeal to human psychology." [by-product overlap] p.201
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"It is striking that similar cargo cults sprang up independently on islands that were widely separated....
...[it] suggests some unifying features of human psychology in general." p.203
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"The logic of Darwinism concludes that the unit in the hierarchy of life which survives and passes through the filter of natural
selection will tend to be selfish. The units that survive in the world will be the ones that succeeded
in surviving at the expense of their rivals at their own level in the hierarchy. That, precisely, is what selfish means in
this context. ... It the gene that, in the form of information, either survives for many generations or does not." p.215
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"A gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit
copies of itself. Such a gene's fequency can increase in the gene pool to the point where kin altruism becomes the
norm." p.216
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Mathematical theory allows two broad classes of stable solution to 'games' of this kind." p.217
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Selection does not favour the evolution of a cognitive awareness of what is good for your genes. ...
What natural selection favours is rules of thumb...." p.220
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"The 'mistake' or 'by-product' idea, which I am espousing,
works like this. Natural selection, in ancestral times
when we lived in small stable bands like baboons, programmed
into our brains altruistic urges, alongside sexual urges...
...We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable
to reciprocate) that we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile
or otherwise unable to reproduce). Both are misfirings, Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes." p.221
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...install rules of thumb in the brain. Those rules still influence us today, even where circumstances make them
inappropriate to their original functions.
Such rules of thumb influence us still, not in a Calvinistically deterministic way but filtered
through the civilizing influences of literature and custom, law and tradition -- and, of course, religion." p.222
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...the intuition that most of us share is that an innocent bystander should not suddenly be dragged
into a bad situation and used for the sake of others without his consent." p.224
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Good old Joshua didn't rest until 'they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman,
young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with edge of his sword. (Joshua 6:21).
...
The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should
give your children to form their morals." p.247
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed
in payment...." p.253
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"For me...our morals, whether we are religious or not, come from another source; and that other source, whatever
it is, is available to all of us...." p.255
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"It was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it." p.257
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"[Zeitgeist - spirit of the times] Where, then, have these concerted
and steady changes in social consciousness come from?
The onus is not on me to answer. ... If forced to advance a theory, I would approach it along the following lines.
We need to explain why the changing moral Zeitgeist is so widely synchronized across large numbers of people;
and we need to explain its relatively consistent direction.
...
One way to put it would be in terms of the changing meme frequencies in the meme pool, but
I shall not pursue that." p.270
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Some of us lag behind the advancing wave of the changing moral Zeitgeist and
some of us are slightly ahead. ... There are local and temporary setbacks.... But over the longer
time scale, the progressive trend is unmistakable and it will continue." p.270-271
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose
to disprove it." p.283
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming."
p.283
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"'Evil', as is very clear from the quotation, doesn't mean doing things that have bad consequence for people, It means
private thoughts and actions that are not to 'the Christian majority's private liking." p.290
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...the fact of evolution. ...many anti-abortionists...don't understand that evolution is a fact!" p.300
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"To a consequentialist like me...." p.301
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"A better way to say this is that there are no natural borderlines in evolution. ...evolutionary continuity shows that
there is no absolute distinction." p.301
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"I am saying how things have evolved." p.3
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at
least have the chance to upset their designs, something which no other species has ever
aspired to." p.3
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"I am not concerned here with the psychology of motives. ... My definition is
concerned only with whether the effect of an act is to lower or raise the survival
prospects of the presumed altruist and the survival prospects of the presumed beneficiary." p.4
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"It is a very complicate business to demonstrate the effects of behaviour on
long-term survival prospects. In practice, when we apply the definition to real behaviour,
we must qualify it with the word 'apparently'." p.5
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Remember that we are not talking about conscious motives. They may or may not be
present...but they are irrelevant to our definition." p.6
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Evolution works by natural selection, and natural selection means the differential
survival of the 'fittest'. " p.7 (fitness not defined)
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Konrad Lorenz, in On Aggression, speaks of the 'species preserving' functions
of aggressive behavior, one of these being to make sure that only the fittest individuals are
allowed to breed. This is a gem of a circular argument.... ...Lorenz...evidently did not
realize that his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory." p.9
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law
of survival of the stable." p.13
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...erratic copying in biological replicators can in a real sense give rise to
improvement, and it was essential for the progressive evolution of life that some errors
were made." p.18
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...should we then call the original replicator molecules 'living'? Who cares?" p.19
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"The process of improvement was cumulative." p.20
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"This may have been how the first living cells appeared. Replicators began not
merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their
continued existence. ... The first survival machines probably consisted of nothing
more than a protective coat. ... Survival machines got bigger and more elaborate,
and the process was cumulative and progressive. ... They have come along way, those
replicators, Now they go by the name of genes,and we are their survival machines." p.21
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Genes do indirectly control the manufacture of bodies, and the influence is strictly
one way: acquired characteristics are not inherited." p.24
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"A body is the genes' way of preserving the genes unaltered." p.25
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...their survival depends on the efficiency of the bodies in which they live and which
they helped build." p.25
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"We can define a word how we like for our own purposes, provided we do so clearly and
unambiguously. The definition I want to use comes from G.C.Williams. A gene is defined
as any portion of chromosomal material which potentially lasts for enough generations
to serve as a unit of natural selection." p.30 (p.15 "It had to happen by definition.")
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Then natural selection may tend to favour the new 'genetic unit' so formed, and it
will spread through the future generations." p.33
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"I said that I preferred to think of the gene as the fundamental unit of natural
selection, and therefore the fundamental unit of self-interest. What I have now done
is to define the gene in such a way that I cannot really help being right!" p.35
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"A gene is not indivisible, but it is seldom divided". P.35
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"If genes continually blended with each other, natural selection as we now understand
it would be impossible." p.36
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Mendal's discovery had already been published, and it could have rescued Darwin, but
alas he never knew about it...." p.36
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
["It has often been remarked as strange that Mendal's great achievement was never realized or
acknowledged in his lifetime. His paper was circulated to all of Europe's great libraries and was
received by many eminent biologists (including Darwin), none of whom saw the importance of his
discoveries." p.10
Richard Milton, Chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM ]
"The genes are immortals.... ...the genes in the world have an expectation of life
which must be measured not in decades but in thousands and millions of years." p.36
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"In sexually reproducing species, the individual is too large and too temporary a
genetic unit to qualify as a signigicant unit of natural selection. ... A population
is not a discrete enough entity to be a unit of natural selection, not stable and
unitary enough to be 'selected' in preference to another population." p.36
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"The genes are not destroyed by crossing over, they merely change partners and march
on. Of course they march on. That is their business. ...genes are forever." p.37
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...a DNA molecule could theoretically live on in the form of copies of itself for
a hundred million years.
What I am doing is emphasizing the potential near-immortality of a gene,
in the form of copies, as its defining property. ...We want to find the
practical unit of natural selection." p.37
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"It is its potential immortality that makes a gene a good candidate as the basic
unit of natural selection." p.38
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"The few new ones (genes) who succeed do so partly because they are lucky, but
mainly because they have what it takes, and that means they are good at making
survival machines. ...that body is a little bit more likely to live and reproduce
than it would have been under the influence of the rival gene or allele." p.38
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Any gene which behaves in such a way as to increase its own survival chances in
the gene pool at the expense of its alleles will, by definition, tautologously,
tend to survive. " p.39
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...by definition luck, good and bad, strikes at random, and a gene which is
consistently on the losing side is not unlucky: it is a bad gene." p.41
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...the 'environment' of a gene consists largely of other genes, each of which is itself
being selected for its ability to cooperate with its environment of other genes." p,42
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"This is that the basic unit of natural selection is best regarded not as a
species, nor as the population, nor even as the individual, but as some small unit
of genetic material which it convenient to label the gene. The cornerstone of the
argument, as given earlier, was the assumption that genes are potentially immortal,
while bodies and all other higher units are temporary." p.42
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"As Medawar points out, this is a circular argument, assuming what it sets
out to prove...." p.42
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Why did sex, that bizarre perversion of straight forward replication, ever
arise in the first place? What is the good of sex?
"This is an extremely
difficult question for the evolutionist to answer. Most serious attempts to answer
it involve sophisticated mathematical reasoning. I am frankly going to evade it except
to say one thing.
"...if sexual, as opposed to non-sexual, reproduction
benefits a gene for sexual reproduction, that is a sufficient explanation for the
existence of sexual reproduction. Whether or not this benefits all the rest of an
individual's genes is comparatively irrelevant. Seen from the selfish gene's point
of view, sex is not so bizarre after all.
"This comes perilously close to being
a circular argument, since the existence of sexuality is a precondition for the whole
chain of reasoning which leads to the gene being regarded as the unit of selection.
I believe there are ways of escaping from the circularity, but this book is not the
place to pursue the question." p.46-47
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...the...gene can be regarded as the nearest thing we have to a fundamental,
independent agent of evolution." p.47
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Biologist are racking their brains trying to think of what useful task this
apparently surplus DNA is doing. But from the point of view of the selfish genes
themselves, there is no paradox. The true 'purpose' of DNA is to survive, no more
and no less." p.47
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...it is indeed individuals who live or die, and the immediate manifestation of
natural selection is nearly always at the individual level. But the long-term consequences of
non-random individual death and reproductive success are manifested in the form of changing gene
frequencies in the gene pool. With reservations, the gene pool plays the same role for modern
replicators as the primeval soup did for the original ones." p.48
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Evolution is the process by which some genes become more numerous and others
less numerous in the gene pool." p.48
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"At times, gene language gets a bit tedious, and for brevity and vividness we
shall lapse into metaphor. But we shall always keep a sceptical eye on our metaphors,
to make sure they can be translated back into gene language if necessary." p.48
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"But life, like the game of chess, offers too many different possible eventualities
for all of them to be anticipated. Like the chess programmer, the genes have to 'instruct'
their survival machines not in specifics, but in general strategies and tricks of the living
trade." p.58-59
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...the genes have to perform a task analogous to prediction." p.59
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business
of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions which pay off.
The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for
many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation." p.59
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Which is the best gambling strategy depends on all sorts of complex things... ... Some
form of weighing up the odds has to be done. But of course we do not have to think of the
animals as making the calculations consciously. All we have to believe is that those individuals
whose genes build brains in such a way that they tend to gamble correctly are as a direct result
more likely to survive, and therefore to propagate those same genes." p.60
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"We can carry the metaphor of gambling a little further." p.60
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes
so complete that it must include a model of itself." p.63
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"The logical conclusion to this trend, not yet reached in any species, would be for
the genes to give the survival machine a single overall policy instruction: do whatever you
think best to keep us alive." p.64
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...the obvious first priorities of a survival machine, and of the brain that takes
the decisions for it, are individual survival and reproduction. All the genes in the 'colony'
would agree on these priorities." p.67
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...the branch of mathematics known as Game Theory." p.74
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"The hawk and dove story is, of course, naively simple. It is a 'model', something
which does not really happen in nature., but which helps us to understand things which do
happen in nature." p.79
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"I have a hunch that we may come to look back on the invention of the ESS [evolutionally stable strategy] concept as
one of the most important advances in evolutionary theory since Darwin." p.90
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"
The gene pool is the long-term environment of the gene. 'Good' genes are blindly selected as
those which survive in the gene pool. This is not a theory: it is not even an observed fact:
it is a tautology." p.92
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"
Progressive evolution may be not so much a steady upward climb as a series of discrete steps..."
p.93
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"
Genes are selected on 'merit'. But merit is judged on the basis of performance against the
background of the evolutionally stable set which is the current gene pool." p.93
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...gene might be able to assist replicas of itself which are sitting
in other bodies." p.95
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"He is, of course, entitled to define a word however he likes, but this a most
confusing definition, and I hope that Wilson will change it in future editions of his
justly influential book." p.102
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"The genes who have survived have done so in conditions which tended on average
to characterize the environment of the species in the past." p.106
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"One sometimes hears it said that kin selection is all very well as a theory,
but there are very few examples of its working in practice. This criticism can only be
made by someone who does not understand what kin selection means. The truth is that all
examples of child-protection and parental care, and all associated bodily organs,
milk-secreting glands, kangaroo pouches, and so on, are examples of the working in
nature of the kin-selection principle.
...
If anybody does not want to admit
that parental care is an example of kin selection in action, then the onus is on him
to formulate a general theory of natural selection which predicts parental altruism,
but which does not predict altruism between collateral kin. I think he will
fail." p.116
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"
R.L.Trivers, 1972....
Parental investment (PI) is defined as 'any investment by the
parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring's chance of surviving (and
hence reproductive success) at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other
offspring.'
...
...Triver's measure is well worth using...." p.133
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"I must stress that I have told the story in an idealized way. Real life
is not so neat and tidy." p.193
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"Are there any reasons for supposing our own species to be unique? I believe the
answer is yes.
Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one
word: 'culture'" p.203
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"As in genetic evolution though, the change may be progressive." (204)
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"...we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on
evolution. I am an enthusiastic Darwinism, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory
to be confined to the narrow context of the gene. The gene will enter my thesis as an
analogy, nothing more.
What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer
is that they are replicators. The laws of physics are supposed to be true all over
the accessible universe." p.205
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicator and
other, consequent, kinds of evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator has
recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. ...
The new
soup in the soup if human culture. We need a name for the new replicator....
Examples
of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of
building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body
to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from
brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation." p.206
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator
worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time." p.208
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
"
I appeal to the same verbal trick I used in Chapter 3. There I divided the 'gene complex'
into large and small genetic units, and units within units. The 'gene' was defined, not in
a rigid all-or-none way, but as a unit of convenience, a length of chromosome with
sufficient copying-fidelity to serve as a viable unit of natural selection. " p.209
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, First Edition 1976
"
Much of what Darwin said is, in detail, wrong. Darwin if he read this book would scarcely recognize
his own original theory in it, though I hope he would like the way I put
it." p.210
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, First Edition 1976
"...there is little in the book that I would rush to take back now, or apologize for." (preface vii)
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 30th anniversary edition, 2006
"The Selfish Gene has been criticized for anthropomorphic personification and this too needs an explanation,
if not an apology. I employ two levels of personification: of genes, and of organisms. Personification of genes
really ought not to be a problem, because no sane person thinks DNA molecules have conscious personalities, and
no sensible reader would impute such a delusion to an author." (preface x)
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 30th anniversary edition, 2006
"The fundamental unit, the prime mover of all life, is the replicator.
A replicator is anything in the universe of which copies are made.
...
No copying process is perfect, however, and the population of replicators comes to include varieties that
differ from one another."(264)
...
"As time goes by, the world becomes filled with the most powerful and ingenuous replicators.
Gradually, more and more elaborate ways of being a good replicator are discovered.
Replicators survive, not only by virtue of their intrinsic properties, but by virtue of their consequences
on the world." (265)
...
"Replicators are no longer peppered freely through the sea; they are packaged in huge
colonies--individual bodies. And the phenotypic consequences, instead of being evenly distributed throughout
the world, have in many cases congealed into those same bodies. But the individual body, so
familiar to us on our planet, did not have to exist. The only kind of entity that has to exist
in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator." (266, end of book)
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 30th anniversary edition, 2006
RICHARD MILTON
"There are, for instance, more than 3,000 species of
frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a
greater variation of DNA between them than there is between the
bat and the blue whale.
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"While human DNA is
contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has
more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail --
not much more than a glob of slime in a shell -- has 27
chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes.
So the simple fact is that DNA analysis does not confirm neo-
Darwinist theory."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"The problem is: how can biologists (or anyone else) tell what
characteristics constitute the animal or plant's 'fitness' to
survive? How can you tell which are the fit animals and plants?
The answer is that the only way to define the fit is by means of
a post-hoc rationalisation -- the fit must be "those who
survived". While the only way to characterise uniquely those who
survive is as "the fit". The central proposition of the
Darwinian argument turns out to be an empty tautology."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"C.H. Waddington, professor of biology at Edinburgh University
wrote; "Natural selection, which was at first considered as
though it were a hypothesis that was in need of experimental or
observational confirmation, turns out on closer inspection to be
a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously
unrecognised relation. It states that the fittest individuals in
a population (defined as those who leave the most offspring) will
leave most offspring."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
Simpson's reformulation means all this must be dropped: it is not
the characteristics that directly matter -- it is the animals'
capacity to reproduce themselves. The race is not to the swift,
after all, but merely to the prolific. So how can neo-Darwinism
explain the enormous diversity of characteristics?"
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"...but other puzzling and extraordinary findings have come to light
in recent decades, suggesting that evolution is not blind but
rather is in some unknown way directed.
The experiments of
Cairns at Harvard and Hall at Rochester University suggest that
microorganisms can mutate in a way that is beneficial."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"On at least seventeen occasions between the years 1690 and 1781, a number of astronomers,
including some of Europe's most influential observers, had seen a 'star' in positions
that we now know to have been that of Uranus. One astronomer had even observed the
object for four nights in a row in 1769 but without noticing the motion that would
have disclosed it as a planet not a star.
...
...Herschel thus put a question mark against the nature of the object
the first person to do so. When he observed it further, Herschel saw
that the object had a real motion with respect to the Earth. He therefore
concluded that he was looking at a comet!
Several months were spent trying to fit the new 'comet' to a suitable
cometary orbit, until Lexell suggested that the orbit was probably planetary.
Once the suggestion had been made, it was at once seen to be obvious.
As Kuhn put it, 'A celestial body that had been observed off and on for
almost a century was seen differently after 1781 because, like an
anomalous playing card, it could no longer be fitted to the perceptual
categories (star or comet) provided by the paradigm that had
previously prevailed.'
Kuhn points out that the discovery of Uranus did more for astronomy than merely add another planet to
the solar system. It prepared astronomers to perceive other such objects....
Richard Milton, Alternative Science Chapter 8, Calling a Spade a Spade .
Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new
paradigm is like a man wearing inverting lenses. Confronting the same
constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, he nevertheless
finds them transformed through and through in many of their details.'
The research work reviewed briefly here seems to me to point to a single
unequivocal conclusion: that the human mind plays an active role in the
process of perception. The mind is no mere passive mirror reflecting external
events. It does not merely represent data in the way that a computer monitor
does on a 'dot for dot' basis. Instead it contributes something to the
sensory information presented to it. The something that it contributes
comes from our existing experience, and the nature and meaning of our
existing experience includes the consensus view that we strive to reach
to reduce cognitive dissonance to a minimum. Put at its simplest, what we
perceive when we make our observations depends at least in part on what
we already believe is there.
Richard Milton, Alternative Science Chapter 8, Calling a Spade a Spade . (conclusion)
"Lyons went on to report that the suppression had been engineered by Harlow Shapley of Harvard,
although Shapley later denied this to Newsweek. Other scientists were not so shy about admitting
their part. Paul Herget said, 'I am one of those who participated in this campaign against
Macmillan', while Michigan astronomer Dean McLaughlin wrote, 'Worlds in Collision has just
changed hands . . . I am frank to state that this change was the result of pressure that
scientists and scholars brought to bear on the Macmillan Company.'
Even after the change of
publisher, ripples of the affair continued to be felt. James Putnam,
the editor who had been twenty-five years with Macmillan and who had bought Velikovsky's book,
was summarily dismissed. And Macmillan sent a representative to placate the powerful American
Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting in Cleveland in December.
Charles Skelley, for Macmillan, duly appeared before a committee specially appointed to
study means for 'evaluating new theories before publication' - in other words, scientific censorship.
...
Within little more than a decade of publication, all of Velikovsky's key predictions
were confirmed by experiment.
...
Considering that the main thrust of science's attack on Velikovsky was a personal
attack on his integrity, the behaviour
of some of his most vociferous critics in the scientific community makes interesting reading.
In August 1963, Harper's Magazine, which had carried the original announcement of Velikovsky's
theories, now did a retrospective piece pointing out how all his main predictions had been borne out.
...
It is equally interesting to see how the Harvard astronomer dealt with the fact that most of Velikovsky's
predictions had been confirmed. On the radio emissions from Jupiter, he wrote that, since most
scientists do not accept Velikovsky's theory then it follows that 'any seeming verification of
Velikovsky's prediction is pure chance'.
"Davies then conceived the following plan. He would publish the paper but he arranged with his friend Bernard
Dixon, editor of the weekly magazine New Scientist, to publish simultaneously an article hostile to Uri Geller.
Then he commissioned Christopher Evans to write the editorial comment in Nature, which would both be
derogatory of the Stanford research and would point readers to the hostile article by Dr Joe Hanlon in
New Scientist. And this is the plan that Davies and Dixon put into operation."
Richard Milton, Alternative Science Chapter 10, Guardians of the Gate
"What a book like Forbidden Archaeology shows, in my view, is that if even a half (or even a tenth)
of the objections raised by its authors are valid scientific objections, then Darwinism is a theory
that is in deep, irremediable trouble.
...
Neither I nor anyone else expects Brass to come up with "a new theory on human evolution," and
Brass knows this perfectly well. "
September 9, 2001, Review by Richard Milton of The Antiquity of Man: Artefactual, fossil and gene records explored
by Michael Brass
"The young man was Edward Bernays, the Viennese-born nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays would prove to have an
influence on the 20th century that was arguably greater than that of his famous uncle." p.75
Richard Milton, THE BEST OF ENEMIES Britain and Germany: 100 years of Truth and Lies, 2007, Icon Books
"...Bernays realised, it was far more effective to set up stories that the press was bound to cover
because it wanted to, rather than because it was being spoon-fed with information or because its arm was being twisted.
This is a fundamental principle that many government PR people still have not learned even today.
...
Bernays not only had a new set of ideas, he also had a new name for them. When he opened his office in
Madison Avenue in 1919, the sign of the door described him not as a Press Agent but as Counsel in something called
Public Relations - the term he himself coined to replace their already loaded word propagandist.
... His solution was not approach the press directly, but instead to organize a stunt they would be bound to cover -
a march of women, many of them very attractive...." p.78
Richard Milton, THE BEST OF ENEMIES Britain and Germany: 100 years of Truth and Lies, 2007
"...Bernays continued to use Freudian psychology to design campaigns of mass public persuasion for a number of
clients. He described his campaigns in these words: 'If we understand the mechanism and motives of the
group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their
knowing it.' He called this scientific moulding of opinion the 'engineering of consent'.
He continued to act indirectly on leading opinion formers, rather than directly on the media. 'If you
can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious co-operation', he said, 'you automatically influence
the group which they sway." p.79
Richard Milton, THE BEST OF ENEMIES Britain and Germany: 100 years of Truth and Lies, 2007
...shortly before his death in 1996, Bernays made an astonishing admission. When asked by Ewen to describe how
he set about planning a specific public relations assignment, Bernays revealed that he had made no direct contact
with the mass media for 50 years.
...First he conducted a survey of doctors....
Bernays circulated the results of the survey to 5,000 doctors nationwide....
...he...indirectly leaked [it] to the media without attribution. Before long, journalists throughout America
...were phoning the local physicians to ask [about it].... Nobody even suspected that
the question had been planted in their
minds, much less that the answer had been planted even before the question." p.84-85
Richard Milton, THE BEST OF ENEMIES Britain and Germany: 100 years of Truth and Lies, 2007
"It is interesting that Bernays recommends honesty as the best way of overcoming voter cynicism and
disenchantment. It was precisely this aspect of Bernays' Propaganda that - contrary to the received
image - Goebbels picked up on and employed with outstanding success...." p.88
Richard Milton, THE BEST OF ENEMIES Britain and Germany: 100 years of Truth and Lies, 2007
Richard Milton, THE BEST OF ENEMIES Britain and Germany: 100 years of Truth and Lies, 2007
Almost certainly this was because as an animal breeder he knew from first hand experience that no
plant or animal breeder has ever succeeded in producing a new species by selective breeding.
Primarily this is because of what Harvard's Ernst Mayr called "genetic homeostasis" -- the
barrier beyond which selective breeding will not pass because of the onset of sterility or
exhaustion of genetic variability.
Richard Milton, Chapter 12. Green Mice and Blue Genes
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
NeoDarwinism fails to explain satisfactorily a whole range of extraordinary natural observations -- starting
with the thick skin on the soles of our feet, which is a genetic inheritance. Fish secrete 'mirror scales'
to camouflage themselves against predators, but their skin has to be exactly seven millionths of a
centimeter thick or it will not work. Can such precision be the result of undirected, spontaneous mutation?
(Over and over)
"The reason that aquired characteristics cannot be inherited, many believe, is because the mechanism of
inheritance - the genes that contain our sexual cells - cannot be contructively affected by the
environment. The genetic code is a one way system." p.8
Richard Milton, Chapter 2 Through the Looking Glass,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM Park Street Press, Vermont, 1997
"...why is it that thousands of years of serious guided selection by humans has resulted only in
trivial sub-specific variation of domestic plants and animals, while not one new species has been created?" p.9
Richard Milton, Chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM Park Street Press, Vermont, 1997
"...Darwin's theory had been all but consigned to the scrap heap of
history. The theory had tottered on for a few years
following Darwin's death but had fallen out of favor because it lacked a
credible mechanism that could cause change to take
place in the species that populate the world. Darwin had suggested natural fluctuations in form, gently edging a species in one
direction rather than another: like a giraffe's neck getting imperceptibly longer with each generation. But
this phenomenon was nowhere observed in nature. Stability is the norm, not change - however slow -
and Darwin's idea of 'heritable characters' was simply a nonstarter.
...de Vries...not the trivial 'fluctuation' of Dawin but substantial 'mutations'...." p.10
Richard Milton, Chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"It has often been remarked as strange that Mendal's great achievment was never realized or
acknowledged in his lifetime. His paper was circulated to all of Europes great libraries and was
recieved by many eminent biologists (including Darwin), none of whom saw the importance of his
discoveries." p.10
Richard Milton, Chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"In neo-Darwinian theory, species evolve into form by means of natural selection as Darwin had
suggested. But they do so not because of the trivial variation that ocurrs between all
individuals but because of chance mutations in their genetic makeup, most
of which are neutral or lethal, but a few of which favor
a change to a more advantagious form." p.10-11
Richard Milton, Chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...although radioactive decay is the most stable source of chronometry we have today,
it is badly comprimised as a historical timekeeper, because it is not the rate of decay
that is being measured but the amount of decay products left." p.38
Richard Milton, Chapter 5 Rock of Ages,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...Alfred Wegener, published a theory that was greeted with universal
derision by the world scientific community - continental drift. ...
Perhaps to disguise their embarrassment at rejecting the idea so scornfully in the past,
...(the establishment has been) rechristening it as 'plate tectonics'...." p.60
Richard Milton, Chapter 6 Tales from Before the Flood, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...transitional species are not merely unusual they are missing entirely." p.101
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The case for Darwinism would be made convincingly if someone were to produce a sequence of
fossils from a sequence of adjacent strata...showing indisputable signs of gradual progressive
change on the same basic stock, but above the species level (as opposed to subspecific variation).
...Nowhere in the world has
anyone met this simple evidential criterion with a straightforward fossil sequence from
successive strata. Yet there are so many billions of fossils available from so many thousands
of strata, that the failure to meet this modest demand is inexplicable if evolution has taken
place in the way Darwin and his followers have envisaged. It ought to be relatively easy to
assemble not merely a handful but hundreds of species arranged in lineal descent. Schoolchildren
should be able to do this on an afternoon's nature study trip to the local quarry: but even the
world's foremost paleontologists have failed to do so with the whole Earth to choose from and the
resources of the world's greatest universities at their disposal." p.110
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
Ammonites get more ribs then less ribs; they become closely coiled then loosely coiled;
they grow lumps, become smooth, then grow lumps again." p.111
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
No one can blame a researcher who makes a mistake that is rectified by further research, for this
is the very method of science. ...something else. It is a prime illustration of the infinite elasticity of
Darwinian theory: of its ability to interpret the data in any one of a number of completely different ways -
even with diametrically opposed conclusions - as long as those ways are consistent with the central belief in
Darwinian evolution itself.
'Recapitulation' means fossils evolved one way. 'Proterogenesis' means they evolved in the opposite direction.
In reality [they] give no clue to lineage at all...." p.113-114
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
...apparent kinship relationships are, at least to some extent, an artifact of the system
employed by science to describe and classify each species." p.115
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...says Mayr...'no system of nomenclature and no hierarchy of systematic categories is able to represent
adequately the complicated set of interrelationships and divergences found in nature'." p.116
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"In fact, from a genetic standpoint, every organism is unique." p.117
Richard Milton, Chapter 10, The Record of the Rocks, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
...it turns out...that natural selection cannot be studied in any experimental way." p.123
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...'survival of the fittest' means; the prolific breeding of the most prolific breeders." p.123
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Darwin conceived his idea of natural selection by analogy with artificial selection...."
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The overwhelming majority of creatures do not fight, do not kill for food and do not compete
aggressively for space in a way that results in the 'loser' dying out." p.124-125
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Often, also, the females will
mate as readily with the loser as with winner." p.125
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The majority of carnivores do not feed on .125 prey that they themselves have just killed but rather
are scavengers [lions and sharks] Thus the 'successful survivor' is not necessarily the most capable hunter-killer
and does not necessarily possess the characteristics of such a killer. It follows that if these
characteristics are not present, they will not be preserved by breeding." p.126
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The Darwinian concept contained another important tacit assumption: that it is within the power of
individuals to take action to ensure their survival." p.127
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"So it is not the 'fittest' that survives but the luckiest - a quality which is not usually
thought of as inheritable." p.127
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"[According to neo-Darwinists] Natural selection is the process by which the most successful
breeders populate the world, and the less successful breeders die out - regardless of their
respective characteristics." p.129
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...Darwinists have become reluctant to try to explain any particular characteristic as being
responsible...because they would then have to show how and why that
characteristic have favored [one animal] over other animals...." p.129
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"To summarize, the modern position of the synthetic theory is: the struggle for existence plays no
part in evolution. The direction of evolution is determined solely by the characteristics of those
animals and plants that are successful breeders. we are unable to say anything about why a particular
characteristic might favor, or prejudice, the survival of any particular animal or plant.
...[it] is only another way of saying that some animals survive and prosper and other die out - an
observation of limited value.
...it is so nebulous that is can be made to fit a whole range of mutually
contradictory outcomes...." p.129
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...natural selection is entirely compatible with the idea that all animals should
regress to the safest common denominator....
...
...any kind of coloration
will have some adaptive value, whether it is partly camouflage or partly warning,
an will
be selected for." p.130
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...natural selection make no unique predictions but instead is used retrospectively
to explain every outcome: .... Natural selection is not a mechanism: it is rationalization
after the fact." p.130
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest, SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"All the light moths were eaten, leaving only the dark ones. Far from being an
example of evolution or even natural selection, the peppered moth is an example of a
shift in population." p.131
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...just how far can a species vary?" p.131
Richard Milton, Chapter 11, Survival of the Fittest,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Here we have Darwin's central idea of evolution in a nutshell:
bears can become whales.....
...
But despite its apparent aptness, Darwin
changed his mind about this example after publication and withdrew it from the second
and all later editions of his book.
...the transformation that Darwin at first
saw as highly probable has in fact not happened. ... In rejecting the aquatic bear
he was abandoning the central proposition of his entire theory....." p.132-133
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"No one has ever bred a new species artificially...." p.134
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
" 'Obviously, says (Harvard's Ernst) Mayer, 'any drastic improvement under
selection must seriously deplete the store of genetic variability,' And , 'The most
frequent correlated response of one-sided selection is a drop in general fitness.
This plagues virtually every breeding experiment.' (genetic homeostasis)
...it
is a natural barrier." p.135
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...the 'improvement' is gained at the expense of some other characteristic
of the animal.
...
The natural limit on the amount of variation that can be
inherited in a species is merely the expression of the fact that nowhere in the
animal or plant kingdom is there a species that is capable of the infinite biological
plasticity demanded by evolution theory....
... Living organisms are systems with
limited potential for change in which variation of one characteristic reacts on other
characteristics, usually with unfavorable results." p.137-138
Richard Milton, Chapter 12 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The idea of natural selection occurred to Darwin because he had long
been interested in how domestic animals and plants are changed by artificial selection -
by animal husbandry techniques practiced by stockbreeders and his fellow pigeon fanciers. ...
In the same way, Darwin believed, the demands of the environment would act in the
stockbreeder's role, favoring the well-adapted and weeding out the poorly adapted." p.138-139
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...'genetic homeostasis' - the natural barrier beyond which selective
breeding will not pass, and, second, because the genetic program or recipe for
whales is not contained in the existing genetic makeup of bears. A genetic
change is needed before one can change into the other - and natural selection is
not capable of initiating genetic change.
...
...genetic recombination can
give rise to variations that are within the range for each species...." p.140
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Mutation, as understood by synthetic evolutionists, means the spontaneous
change in chemical composition of the genes which occurs quite independently of, and
in addition to, the reshuffling and recombination that ordinarily occurs in sexual
reproduction." p.141
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The only way a bear can become a whale is through mutation. No amount of natural
selection alone will do it, as Darwin was at first inclined to think." p.142
Richard
Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Darwin's original theory offered a single mechanism for the origin of species:
the natural selection of variations that exist from individual to individual." p.143
Richard Milton, Chapter 12, Green Mice and Blue Genes,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...there are some breeding populations (such as of the fruit fly...) that are
described as separate species and that do not (or cannot) interbreed, but which are
genetically identical." p.145
Richard Milton, Chapter 13 The Beak of the Finch SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...the cattalo (buffalo and cattle mix) which is fertile." p.146
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"(Darwin's finches) Darwin went on to add, 'Seeing this gradation and diversity of
structure in one small, intimately related group of birds one might really fancy that, from
an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified
for different ends." p.147
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...the central significance of this finding is that the identification of thirteen
varieties as different species (of Darwin's finches) is impossible to maintain once it is
admitted that they can interbreed and produce fertile young." p.149
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
" It is common, says (doc filmmaker Gillian) Brown, to find the different species
(of Darwin's finches) all over the archipelago...." p.150
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"It is very difficult for an objective observer to see how a group of finches
who 'find it hard to tell themselves apart,' and who do in fact interbreed, can legitimately
be called different species." p.150
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...the new biological definition of a species is that it no longer insists on
determining experimentally whether the creatures in question can interbreed. It is
enough that, for whatever reason, they do not do so. ...it is from this kind of wordplay
that all their subsequent claims of speciation and 'evolution' flow." p.151
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"First they have drawn a distinction between macroevolution and microevolution.
Macroevolution, they say, is the new name for Darwinian speciation....
Microevolution...is very much simpler. It is the change in frequency of variant genes
(called alleles) from generation to generation.... ...no one can disagree that
variant genes do change in frequency....
When you get enough microevolution, say
Darwinists, you eventually get macroevolution. This proposition cannot be tested....
...there is no evidence for gradual change leading to macroevolution in the fossil record....
... The modern view is that natural selection is responsible for selecting which variant
genes are passed on.... Thus modern biologists have taken a step which Darwin never would
take; they have directly equated natural selection with evolution itself.
...
'It
must not be forgotten,' says Ernst Mayr, 'that mutation is the ultimate source of all
genetic variation....'
We must also not forget that the words 'natural selection',
if they mean anything, must mean 'choosing the one or few from the many.' To select is
to pick from a larger number. Thus whatever else 'natural selection' may be it is
inescapably a mechanism that reduces biological diversity. At the same time, it is
clear that Darwinian evolution is a process that essentially involves the increase of
biological diversity - the origin of species, in fact, not their reduction." p.152-153
Richard Milton, Chapter 13, The Beak of the Finch,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...Gertrude Stein must have been unaware that roses exist with 14, 21, 28, and 56 chromosomes." p.154
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Unfortunately, it is not a simple case of a single gene, at a single location, controlling a
single characteristic. Various locations are linked together to control groups of characteristics in a
non-obvious way." p.155
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"These genes are called inert, latent, or inhibited. It is believed by Darwinists that they
are 'stored' in the 90 percent of unused genetic material. Under certain circumstances these inert
genes can replace the normal genes and become expressed in the physical characteristics of the offspring." p.156
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Evolution, according to Darwinists, is due basically to copying errors." p.156
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...'somatic' or body-cell mutation cannot be inherited, and this is the specific reason
that Darwinists are also anti-Lamarckian. They believe...there is no mechanism for these change
to be passed on to the next generation...." p.156
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"In trying to assess whether Darwinists have made their case, the key issue in molecular
biology is the rate of mutation." p.156
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"No one has ever observed a spontaneous inheritable genetic mutation that resulted in a
changed physical characteristic, aside, that is , from a small group of well-known and usually fatal
genetic defects." p.157
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...99 percent of so-called mutations should not be included in the measured rate." p.158
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Thus at the very heart of the synthetic theory of evolution is a single, central matter:
improbability." p.159
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Can we say that each of these previous shuffles, deals, and plays of hands...was a cumulative
event that ultimately contributed to the perfect deal? ...
The answer is no, we cannot. ...
The
same is true of Dawkins hypothetical evolutionary model. Although the earlier steps in his evolution
process are seen retrospectively to contribute to the end result, that does not affect the probability
of each intermediate step coming about at the time." p.161
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The improbability of step number 2 correctly following step number 1, correctly followed
by step number 3 and so on for 100 mutations, is as great as leaping to the 100th step in one go.
What is more, the greater the number of steps into which we break up the overall leap, the more
improbable it becomes that they will all take place in the right order.
...the next copying error is more likely to be about something else entirely." p.162
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Ronald Fisher's often quoted observation that 'natural selection is a mechanism for
generating improbability' can now be seen to be both illogical and irrelevant to the debate on
evolutionary processes. Improbability has nothing to do with natural selection: it is connected
entirely with the genetic mutation part of the Darwinian mechanism." p.165
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Darwinists often conveniently forget that chance is blind and lapse into using phrases
like 'selection-pressure'...imagining that natural selection can place an order with random
mutation like diners choosing from a restaurant menu." p.165
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"(G.G. )Simpson's claim...'The characteristics themselves do not directly matter at all.
All that matters is who leaves more descendants over the generations. Natural selection favors
fitness only if you define fitness as leaving more descendants.' (1964) p.164 (and p.128)
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"What Dawkins has shown is that, if you want to get the evolutionary ball rolling, you need
some form of design to take a hand in the proceedings, just as he himself had to sit down and program his computer.
In fact his experiment shows...there is no evidence for beneficial spontaneous genetic mutation: there is no
evidence for natural selection.... There is only evidence of an unquenchable optimism among Darwinists...." p.169
Richard Milton, Chapter 14, Of Cabbages and Kings,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"It is homology that leads Darwinists to put together isolated fossil remains in ancestor-descendant
relationships. It is homology that Darwinists rely on to bridge the gaps in the fossil record, as in the
case of horses. It is homology that underlies the diagrams drawn up by Darwinists from Haeckel to the
present day showing how every living thing is related.
Ultimately, however, it is homology that has
provided the greatest stumbling block to Darwinian theory....
...If the Darwinian interpretation of homology is correct, them you would expect to find at
the microscopic level the same homologies that are found at the macroscopic level. In fact that
is not what has been found." p.179
Richard Milton, Chapter 16, Pandora's Box,
16 SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Yet when biologists did begin to acquire an understanding of the molecular mechanism of
genetics, they found that apparently homologous structures in different species are specified by
quite different genes. Pandora's box turned out to be empty." p.181
Richard Milton, Chapter 16, Pandora's Box,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Almost all genes in higher organisms have multiple effects...." p. 181
Richard Milton, Chapter 16, Pandora's Box,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"In 1962, Thomas Kuhn astonished his academic contemporaries by proposing that
scientific theories should be looked on not only as dealing with pure objective facts,
but rather as systems of belief relating to a wider context: a frame of reference consisting
of interlocking scientific, social, and even political ideas. The ideological context, which
Kuhn terms a paradigm, is implicitly agreed upon by scientists who subscribe to a particular
theory and who share the same world view.
The power of the paradigm, says Kuhn, is so great
that some scientists will continue to believe it even in the face of contradictory evidence....
Such an ideological context can be found in anthropology in the nineteenth century when most
Victorian scientists shared the implicit belief that the colored races were genetically inferior
to the white European race." p.185
Richard Milton, Chapter 17, Paradigm Lost,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Darwin himself founded much of his evolutionary thinking on equally racist ideas.
In The Descent of Man he indicated his belief that the Negro races were more closely
related to the apes than white people and also his belief that, 'at some future period, not
very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost exterminate and
replace the savage races throughout the world.' " p.186
Richard Milton, Chapter 17, Paradigm Lost,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The concept of recapitulation of past evolutionary stages was an important one for
evolutionary theory not only in embryology, since it could be used, and was used, to explain
a wide range of common observations from the natural world which contradict the fundamental
idea of progressive evolution. ...one would expect the fossil record to show such cumulative
complexity through time.
In fact this is not what the fossil record shows. Sometimes the
anatomy of creatures becomes more complicated (often is bizarre and apparently senseless ways....)
but they are succeeded in the rocks by remains of creatures who become simpler again and then
complicated again." p.190
Richard Milton, Chapter 17, Paradigm Lost,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Any backsliding from the straight-and-narrow line of mutation with natural selection
is written off as 'Lamarckism.' But like so many issues in evolutionary theory, this one refuses
to go away. For despite the often repeated claim that no one has demonstrated repeatedly the
inheritance of acquired characteristics experimentally in the laboratory, the fact is that numerous
researchers have done just that." p.210
Richard Milton, Chapter 19 Hopeful Monsters,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The specific reason that Darwinian geneticists reject any form of Lamarckism is their
belief that the genes are unalterably separate from the cells of the body and that there is no
route by which changes could be communicated to them from outside. ... Crick said that genetic
information could travel from DNA to protein but not from protein to DNA.
...Howard Temin...discovered
that viruses can transport genetic material into host cells and embed it is the host DNA where it will
later replicate itself...." p.210-211
Richard Milton, Chapter 19, Hopeful Monsters,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"There are even some paradigm-shattering and entirely novel approaches to biology such as the
theory of formative causation proposed by Rupert Sheldrake." p.213
Richard Milton, Chapter 19, Hopeful Monsters,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Sheldrake has sought answers to unexplained mysteries thrown up by research that are usually
ignored by science. When a laboratory rat has learned a new trick in one place, other rats elsewhere
seem to be able to learn it more easily. When new chemical compounds, such as antibiotics, are made
for the first time they are difficult to crystallize but the more often they are made the easier their
crystals form. When birds first learned to open milk bottles on the doorstep, birds all over the
country suddenly learned the same trick.
Sheldrake's solution...is that...species can learn...through
a process he calls morphic resonance." p.215
Richard Milton, Chapter 19, Hopeful Monsters,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Geison looked up Pasteur's private observations
about the famous experiment and discovered that, in fact, Pasteur did find evidence that life flourished
in his sealed sterile jars, he chose to ignore it." p.216
Richard Milton, Chapter SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...three persistently recurring themes that crying for answers: the unerring accuracy of
nature, her lack of trial and error: the presence of a systematic program above the cellular level,
controlling somatic development: and the overwhelming probability that environmental factors can in
some way directly affect the genetic structure of the individual." p.221
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"The human eyelid exactly covers the human eye. ... It cannot be maladaptive to have an eyelid
a little longer than needed - yet no creature has such an 'imperfection' in this anatomical detail or
any of the myriad other details." p.221
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...there is something big happening of which we know nothing as yet." p.222
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...the (fruit) fly possesses a mutant gene...which, if present in both parents, results
in an offspring that is eyeless. If a stock of such eyeless flies is bred, then their offspring can
only be eyeless too. Yet within a few generations offspring appear which do have normal eyes.
...
...The fly's genetic mechanism 'knows' that it lacks an important gene and is able to take effective
'action' to compensate." p.222
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...there is some kind of global supervisory function being exercised which seems to be 'aware'
of an overall plan." p.222
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"...it is obvious that if the shrew like creature of the Cretaceous really is the ancestor of
both marsupials and placentals, then its evolutionary 'trajectory' has been strictly circumscribed by
natural laws, just as the flight of a cannonball is circumscribed by gravity." p.223
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Darwinists believe that the only overall control process is natural selection, but the natural
selection mechanism could not account for the cases referred to above. Natural selection works on populations,
not individuals. ... Natural selection offers only death or glory...." p.226
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Alister Hardy, professor of zoology at Oxford.... In 1949 Hardy astonished the British Association
for the Advancement of Science by suggesting...that telepathy was relevant to biology." p.233
Richard Milton, Chapter 20, The Facts of Life,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
"Once the cuckoo is fledged and grown it, too, will fly 12,000 miles south to join the parents it
has never met at the winter quarters it has never seen, with perfect navigational accuracy." p.249
Richard Milton, Chapter 22, On Being Thick-Skinned,
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
Originally pub
Fourth Estate Limited
USA Park Street Press
Rochester,
One Park Street
,Vermont 05767
1992 1997
Dist Canada, Toronto - Publishers Group West
NOVA PBS, The Lord of the Ants, May 20, 2008, Narrator: "Undeterred by these attacks, Ed Wilson
continued to develop his
ideas on human sociobiology in another provocative book, On Human Nature.
Today, most scientists acknowledge
genes play some role in human behavior, but exactly how genes and the
environment interact is still unknown."
"Once you understand the dimensions of the problem, and the philosophical constraints
within which it must be solved, Darwinism is practically true by definition - regardless
of the evidence."
Phillip E. Johnson, (October, 1995),
Daniel Dennett's Dangerous Ideareview of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes
showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
"The Emperor is naked," he said.
"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!"
He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been
heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though
it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see
his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage,
while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
The Emperor's New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson
STEVEN PINKER
"An intelligent system, then, cannot be stuffed with trillions of facts. It must be equipped with a smaller list
of core truths and a set of rules to deduce their implications. But The rules of common sense, like
the categories of common sense, are frustratingly hard to set down. Even the most straightforward ones
fail to capture our everyday reasoning." p.14
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...self-preservation, that universal biological imperative.... ...has to be programmed in". p.15
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems
our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life. ...The mind is organized into modules, or mental organs,
each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the
world. ...The various problems
for our ancestors were subtasks of one big problem for their genes, maximizing the number of copies that
made it to the next generation." p.21
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...not...everything we think, feel, and do is biologically adaptive." p.23
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the ultimate goal of natural selection is to propagate genes, but that does not mean
that the ultimate goal of people is to propagate genes." p. 24
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A jack of all trades is master of none, and that is just as true for our mental organs as for our physical
organs." p.28 "A...remarkable feat is controlling the hand. ...Galen pointed
out the remarkable engineering behind the human hand.
It is a single tool that manipulates objects of an astonishing range of
sizes, shapes, and weights....'Man Handles them all,'
Galen noted, 'as well as if his hands had been made for the sake of each one alone.' " p.12
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The brian has given up any pretense of being a general problem solver." p.29
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our...mental modules need their own cheat-sheets to solve their unsolvable problems." p.29
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Family feelings are designed to help our genes replicated themselves...." p.30
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Only an angel could be a general problem solver; we mortals have
to make fallible guesses from fragmentary information. Each of
our mental modules solves its unsolvable problems by a leap of
faith about how the world works, by making assumptions that are
indispensable but indefensible -- the only defense being that the
assumptions worked well enough in the world of our ancestors"
p.30
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Modules are defined by the special things they do with the information available to them, not necessarily by the
kinds of information they have available." p.31
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Each of the major engineering problems solved by the mind is unsolvable without built-in assumption
about the laws that hold in that arena of interaction with the world." p.31
"I predict that no one will ever build a humanlike robot--and I mean a really humanlike robot--unless they pack it
with computational systems tailored to different problems." p.32
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...learning...is made possible by innate machines designed to do the learning." p.33
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"There have been no discoveries of a gene for civility, language, memory, motor control, intelligence, or other complete
mental systems, and there probably won't ever be." p.34"
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"There is no reason that reverse engineering guided by evolutionary theory should not bring
insight about the rest of the mind" p.35
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...not...all behavior is adaptive in Darwin's sense." (Re: suicide, celibacy, adoption and contraception).41
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...there is no need to strain for adaptive explanations for everything we do." p.42
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...neither adultery nor any other behavior can be in our genes." (desires can be in our genes) p.42
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the gene's eye view predominates in evolutionary biology and has been a stunning success.
...It is as indispensible to researchers in animal behavior as Newton's Law are to mechanical engineers." p.43
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"People don't selfishly spread their genes; genes selfishly spread themselves.
They do it by the way they build our brains. By making us enjoy life....
Our goals are sub goals of the ultimate goal of the
genes, replicating themselves. " p.44
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A universal structure to the mind is not only possible but likely to be true." p.49
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Differnces among people...are of minor interest when we ask how the mind works." p.49
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the theory of a module-packed mind...
...A richly structured mind allows for complicated negotiations inside the head...." p.51
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...I do know that happiness and virtue have nothing to do with what natural selection designed us
to accomplish in the ancestral environment. ...Well into my procreating years I am voluntarily childless...ignoring
the solemn imperative to spread my genes. By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic loser,
.... But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don't like it, they can go jump in the lake." p.52
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...I believe that science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the same entities in the
world, just as poker and bridge are different games played with the same fifty-two card
deck. The science game treats
people as material objects, and its rules are the physical processes that cause behavior
through natural selection and neurophysiology. The ethics game treats people as equivalent, sentient,
rational, free-willed agents, and its rules are the calculus that assigns moral value to behavior through
the behavior's inherent nature or its consequences.
Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics games playable. ... As long as
there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, the world is close enough to idealization of
free will that moral theory can meaningfully be applied to it." p.55
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...some categories are products of a complex mind designed to mesh with what is in nature." p.57
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our mental life is a noisy parliament of competing factions. ...
I believe that a psychology of many computational
faculties engineered by natural selection is our best hope for a grasp on how the mind works that does
justice to its complexity." p.58
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"In fact,
without a specification of a creatures goals, the very idea of intelligence
is meaningless." p.61
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Intelligence, then, is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions
based on rational (truth-obeying) rules. .. We have desires and we pursue them
using beliefs...." p.62
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...humans are the only devices in the universe that respond to danger, praise, English, and beauty." p.63
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...intuitve psychology is still the most useful and complete science of behavior there is." p.63
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"To the extent that thought consists of applying any set of well-specified rules, a machine
can be built that, in some sense, thinks." p.68
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the popular misconception that we think in our mother tongue.
.... (a spoken language can) achieve brevity by leaving out any information that the listener can mentally
fill in from the context. In contrast, the "language of thought" in which knowledge is couched can
leave nothing to the imagination, because it is the imagination" p.70
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A better explanation is that computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms.
Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking
is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying
is executing operations triggered by a goal." p.78
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...a representation is a set of symbols corresponding to aspects of the world...." P.79
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Sally must be modular: one part of her assesses danger, another decides whether to flee, yet
another figures out how to flee." p.88
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"(There are no truly synonymous sentences)" p.88
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"In The Language Instinct I explained how these representations
determine what goes into a sentence and how people
communicate and play with language." p.90
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Why so many kinds of representations? Wouldn't it be simpler to have an Esperanto of the mind? In fact,
it would be hellishly complicated. The modular organization of mental software, with its
packaging of knowledge into separate formats, is a nice example of how evolution and engineering
converge on similar solutions" p.90
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Presumably the distinct formats of representation used by the human mind -- images, phonological
loops, hierarchical trees, mentalese -- evolved because they allow simple programs ( that is, stupid
demons or homunculi) to compute useful things from them." p.91
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Real-life humans do better, perhaps because we are fitted with auto-associators that use a preponderance
of mutually consistent pieces of information to override one unusual piece. "Pritn"
would activate the more familiar pattern "print"...." p.105
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...five feats of everyday thinking. ... One feat is entertaining the concept of the individual. ...
" p.114
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The concept of the [other as an] individual is the fundamental particle of our faculties of social reasoning." p.116
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The spouse of one identical twin feels no romantic attraction toward the other twin." p.117
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"When nature presents us with objects that perfectly fill a bank of pigeonholes, its telling us that the objects
must be built out of smaller components....
Thoughts are assembled out of concepts; they are not stored whole." p.120
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"To be sure, many common-sense concepts really are fuzzy at their edges and have no clear definitions." p.126
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...people can also create systems of rules -- intuitive theories -- that define categories in terms
of the rules that apply to them." p.127
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The alternative I am pushing is that humans can mentally symbolize kinds of objects,
and those symbols can be refereed
to in a number of rule systems we carry around in our heads." p.128
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Gould has denied consciousness to all nonhuman animals." p.133
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"verbal humor sets readers up with one meaning of an ambiguous word and surprises them with another." p.134
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Life is a series of deadlines.
...
Only information relevant to the problem at hand should be allowed in." p.138
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...portions of this information can fall under the spotlight of attention, get rotated into
and out short term memory, and feed our deliberative cognition. ...sensations and thoughts come with an emotional
flavoring...." p.139
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Behavior is a game of inches." p.140
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"We not only register events but register them as pleasurable or painful.
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS p.143
"And evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek....
The things that become objects of desire are the kind of things that led, on average, to enhanced odds
of survival and reproduction in the environment in which we evolved...." p.143
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The agents of the brain might very well be organized hierarchically
into nested subroutines with a set of master decision rules, a computational demon...
sitting at the top of the chain of command. It would not be a ghost in the machine, just another set of
if-then rules or neural network that shunts control to the loudest,
fastest, or strongest agent one level down. ...
...the goal of just one of the mind's agents." p.144
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"What we do need is a theory of how the subjective qualities of sentience emerge
out of mere information access." p.145
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our incomprehension of sentience does not impede our understanding of how
the mind works in the least." p.147
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the only thing left missing by the lack of a theory of sentience would
be an understanding of sentience itself." p.148
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...we cannot banish sentience from our discourse or reduce it to information access,
because moral reasoning depends on it. ... a topic not for science but for ethics...." p.148
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the Victorian ideal of progress, and the modern secular humanism all lead people to
misunderstand evolution as an internal yearning or unfolding toward greater complexity,
climaxing in the appearence of man." p.151
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Over time the organisms acquire designs that adapt them for survival and
reproduction in that environment, period; nothing pulls them in any
direction other than success there and then." p.153
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"(some)...organisms reach an optimum and stay put, often for hundreds of millions of years." p.153
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Evolution is about ends, not means,; becoming smart is just one option." p.153
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Natural selection is the only explanation we have of how complex
life can evolve, putting aside the question
of how it did evolve. If Dawkins is right, as I think he is, natural
selection is indispensible to understanding the human mind." p.155
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The folk theory that organisms respond to an urge to unfold into more
complex and adaptive forms obviously won't do. the urge -- and, more important, the power to achieve
its ambitions -- is a bit of magic that is left unexplained." p.158
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"(on Lamarck) First, using an organ does not, by itself, make the organ function better." p.159
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Genetic drift can, in principle, explain why a population has a simple trait...(like junk DNA)" p.160
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...changes can occur impressively fast. If a mutant produces just one percent more offspring than
its rivals, it can increase its representation in a population from 0.1 percent to 99.9 percent in just over
four thousand generations." p.164
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the DNA repair machinery in all complex organisms." p.167
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...incipient wings that first evolved as adjustable solar panels." p.171
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Occasionally a machine designed for a complicated improbable task can be pressed into service to do
something simpler." p.171
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Selection is not invoked to explain mere usefulness; it's
invoked to explain improbable usefulness." p.172
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the beneficial functions all
have to be in the service of reproduction. ...the
beneficiary of the function has to be the replicator." p.174
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...we should expect to find activities of the mind that are not
adaptations in the biological sense." p.174
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Life is a choice among gambles. ...the best one can do is play the odds. ...every decision in life amounts
to choosing which lottery ticket to buy. ...all ultimately valuated in the expected number
of surviving offspring." p.175
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Natural selection does not care how baroque the brain-assembly process is, or how
ugly the resulting brain. Modifications are evaluated strictly on how well the brain's
algorithms work in guiding perception, thought, and action of the whole animal." p.176
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...networks with multiple hidden layers, which complex animals, especially humans, surely have." p.177
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the animal senses its good fortune and retains those settings, ceasing the trial and error.
From then on it enjoys a higher rate of reproduction." p.178
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The successful animal will reproduce earlier, hence more often." p.179
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...birds have responded by evolving a special algorithm for learning where
the celestial pole is in the night sky." p.181
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Are the marvelous algorithms of animals mere "instincts" that we have risen above?
...we have more. Our vaunted flexibility comes from scores of instincts assembled
into programs and pitted in competitions." p.184
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"At some point a thinker must execute a rule, because he just
can't help it: its the human way, a matter of course, the only appropriate
and natural thing to do -- in short, an instinct." p.185
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...human knowledge is not just couched in concrete instructions like "how to catch a rabbit."
...People compose new knowledge and plans by mentally playing out combinatorial
interactions among these laws in their mind's eye." p.188
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Are we still evolving? Biologically, probably not much." p.205
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...selection may look like it is adapting each organism to its needs of the present,
but really it is just favoring the descendants of organisms that were adapted
to their own needs in the past." p.206
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"But what about the Darwinian imperative to survive and reproduce?
As far as the day-to-day behavior is concerned, there is no such imperative.
... (pornography, drugs, obesity) Human vice is proof that
biological adaptation is, speaking literally, a thing of the past.
Our minds are adapted to the small foraging bands in which our family spent
ninety-nine percent of its existence..." p.207
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"People do not divine what is adaptive for them or their genes; their genes give them thoughts and feelings
that were adaptive in the environment in which the genes were selected." p.208
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The ability of objects to attract reference frames to themselves...." p.268
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Pictures are ambiguous, but thoughts, virtually by definition, cannot be ambiguous." p.297
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"I agree with gould that the brain has been exapted for novelties...but....
...who or what is doing the elaborating and co-opting, and why the original structures
were suited to being co-opted." p.301
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth." p.305
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the brain is compelled to organize; without catagories, mental life would be chaos." p.307
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our theories, both folk and scientific, can idealize away from the messiness of the
world and lay bare its underlying causal forces." p.312
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The argument against bigotry, then, does not come from the design specs for a rational
statistical categorizer. It comes from a rule system, in this case a rule of ethics, that tells us
when to turn our statistical categorizers off." p.313
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...human behavior makes most senese when it is explained in terms of beliefs and desires,
not in terms of volts and grams." p.314
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Many cognative scientists believe that the mind is equipped with innate intuitive theories
or modules for the major ways of making sense of the world." p.314
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...I prefer to think of the ways of knowing in anatomical terms, as mental systems, organs, and tissues,
like the immune system, blood, or skin." p.315
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Goals and values are one of the vocabularies in which we mentally couch our experiences." p.315
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Autistic children almost never pretend....
...
In a sense, autistic children are right: the universe is nothing but matter in motion." p.332
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Life is not chess but backgammon, with a throw of dice at every turn." p.343
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"We have inherited a pad of forms that capture the key features of encounters among object and forces...."
p.358
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Galileo wrote that 'The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics; without its help it
is impossible to comprehend a single wor of it.'" p.359
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...human thoughts are combinatorial (simple parts combine) and recursive (parts can be embedded within
parts)...." p.360
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the epiphany is not a masterstroke but a tweaking of an earlier attempt." p.361
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...(emotions) were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather
than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values." p.370
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Each of these goals is attained by a chain of subgoals. My fingers won't reach the latch, so the subgoal
is to find pliers. ... And so on.
But where does the topmost goal, the one that the rest of the program tries to attain, come from?
For artificial intelligence systems, it comes from the programmer. ... For organisms, it comes
from natural selection. The brain strives to put its owner in circumstances like those that caused
its ancestors to reproduce. (The brain's goal is not reproduction itself....)....
And here is the key to why we have emotions. An animal cannot pursue all its goals at once. ...
The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain's highest-level goals. Once triggered by a propitious
moment, an emotion triggers the cascade of subgoals and sub subgoals that we call thinking and acting." p.373
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Most artificial intelligence researchers believe that freely behaving robots...will have to be programmed
with something like emotions merely for them to know at every moment what to do next. (Whether the robots would
be sentient of these emotions is another question....)." p.374
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...are played on a complicated chessboard...." p.374
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"We innately find savannas beautiful...." p.376
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...losses are more keenly felt than equivalent gains." p.392
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Darwin wrote,...'natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each.' .
...Natural selection is the cumulative effect of the relative successes of different
replicators. That means that it selects for the replicators that replicate best, namely the selfish ones.
...amplified by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene.
Almost all evolutionary biologists now accept the point, though
there are debates over other issues." p.397
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Animals behave selfishly because of how their emotion circuits are wired." p.398
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...organisms do not replicate. ...The only things that actually replicate were the genes and fragments of genes
whose copies made it into you.... " p.398
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Genes, not bodies, replicate, and that means that genes,
not bodies, should be selfish.
DNA, of course, has no feelings; 'selfish' means 'acting in ways that make one's own replication more likely.'
The way for a gene to do that in an animal with a brain is to wire the brain so that the animal's pleasures
and pains cause it to act in ways that lead to more copies of the gene. Often that means causing an animal
to enjoy the states that make it survive and reproduce." p.399
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"As far as the gene is concerned, a copy is a copy; which animal houses it is irrelevant." p.399
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Animals, including most people, know nothing about genetics and care even less. People love their children
not because they want to spread their genes (consciously or unconsciously) but because they can't help it.
That love makes them try to keep their children warm, fed, and safe. (p.400) What is selfish is not the
real motives of the person but the metaphorical motives of the genes that built the person. Genes 'try'
to spread themselves by wiring animals brains so the animals love their kin and try
to keep warm, fed and safe.
... Genes are not puppetmasters; they acted as a recipe for making the brain and body
and then they go out of the way. They live in a parellel universe, scattered among bodies,
with their own agenda." p.401
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science." p.401
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Love, compassion, and empathy are invisible fibers that connect genes in different bodies." p.401
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the human mind is equipped with goal setting demons that regulate the doling out of favors;
as with kin-directed altruism, reciprocal altruism is behaviorist short-hand for a set of thoughts and
emotions. ... Collectively they make up a large part of the moral sense." p.403
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The game [of cheating] has become more complicated." p.403
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the reciprocity game." p.404
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Mental life often feels like a parliament within. Thoughts and feelings vie for control
as if each were an agent with strategies for taking over the whole person, you.
... The analogy is imperfect because natural selection designs people to compete but does
not design organs, including mental agents, to compete; the interests of the whole person
are paramount. But the whole person has many goals, like food, sex, and safety, and that requires
a division of labor among mental agents with different priorities and kinds of expertise. The agents are bound by
an entente that benefits the whole person over a lifetime, but over the short term the agents
may outwit one another with devious tactics." p.419
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Natural selection is driven by the competition among genes to be represented in the next generation.
Reproduction leads to a geometric increase in descendants, and on an finite planet not every organism alive
in one generation can have descendants several generations hence. Therefore organisms reproduce, to
some extent, at one another's expense.
...people today owe their existence to having winners as ancestors...." p.427
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"If the mind is an organ of computation engineered by natural selection, our social motives
should be strategies that are tailored to the tournaments we play in." p.429
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The added good one feels toward kin is doled out according to the feeling that reflects
the probability that the kind act will help a relative propagate copies of one's genes.
That in turn depends on nearness of the relative to oneself in the family tree, the confidence
one has in that nearness, and the impact of the kindness on that relative's prospects of
reproducing (which depends on age and need)." p.431
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...[the idea that] you are more likely to be killed by a relative in the home than a mugger in the street.
...turns out to be false." p.434
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...parents are the least selfish entities in the known universe." p.442
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Parental investment is a precious resource, and if a newborn is likely to die there is no point
in throwing good money after bad by fledging or suckling it." p.443
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...[children] should calculate how to make the best of the hand that nature dealt them and of the
dynamics of the poker game they were born into." p.453
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"People cannot directly sense their genetic overlap with another person. ...[they must]
make an intelligent guess." p.458
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A man and woman need each others' DNA and hence can enjoy sex." p.460
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Investment, remember, is anything a parent does that increases the chance of survival of an offspring while
decreasing the parents ability to produce other viable offspring." p.463
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"People everywhere spend as much time as they can afford on activities that, in the struggle to survive and
reproduce, seem pointless. ...
As if that weren't enough of a puzzle, the more biologically frivolous and vain the activity, the more people
exalt it. ...
...tens of thousands of scholars and millions of
pages of scholarship have shed almost no light on the question of
why people pursue the arts at all. The function of the arts is
almost defiantly obscure....
The very uselessness of art that makes it so incomprehensible to evolutionary biology makes it all
too comprehensible to economics and social psychology." p.521-522
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Another reason the psychology of the arts is obscure is that they are not adaptive in the
biologist's sense of the word (p.526 concurs). This book has been about the adaptive design of the major
components of the mind, but that does not mean that I believe that everything the mind does is
biologically adaptive. The mind is a neural computer, fitted by the natural selection with combinatorial
algorithms for causal and probabilistic reasoning about plants, animals...." p.524
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"I will suggest that religion and philosophy are in part the application of mental tools to
problems they were not designed to solve." p.525
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Life is like chess...." p.542
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience." p.561
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our bafflement at the mysteries of the ages may have been the price we paid for a combinatorial
mind that opened up a world of words and sentences....the very things that make a mind worth having." p.565 (end)
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Behavior is not just emitted or elicited, nor does it come directly out of culture or society.
It comes from an internal struggle among mental modules with differing agendas and goals." p.40
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...the self, too, is just another network of brain systems.
...Together with other areas of the prefrontal lobes and the limbic system (the seat of the emotions),
it [the ventromedial prefrontal cortex] anticipates the consequences of one's actions and selects
behavior consonant with one's goals." p.42
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...learning is a change in some part of the brain." p.45
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"It's not just unpleasant temperaments that are partly heritable, but actual behavior with
real consequences." p.50
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...the function of a faculty is not so easy to guess. ...When
the environment consists of rocks, grass and snakes, it' fairly
obvious which strategies work and which ones don't. But when the relevant
environment consists of other members of the species evolving their own
strategies, it id not so obvious. In the game of evolution is it better
to be monogamous or polygamous? Gentle or aggressive....
For questions like these hunches are unhelpful...." p.52
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"[the selfish gene idea]
It means only that the inherited systems for learning thinking,
and feeling have a design that could have led, on average, to enhanced survival
and reproduction in the environment in which our ancestors evolved." p.54
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"To take a simple example, ultimately people crave sex in order to reproduce, (because
the ultimate cause of sex is reproduction), but proximately they may do everything they can not
to reproduce (because the proximate cause of sex is pleasure)." p.54
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"These personally puzzling drives have a transparent evolutionary rationale, and they suggest
that the mind is packed with cravings shaped by natural selection, not with a generic desire
for personal well-being." p.54
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...the mind evolved with a universal complex design." p.55
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...in the competition among genes for representation in the next generation…." P.55
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"'People with autism] ...can grasp physical representations like maps and diagrams but cannot grasp
mental representations -- that is, they cannot read other peoples minds.
...other people refer to them as you and it never occurs to them that the word is
defined relative to who is addressing whom." p.62
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...the Tasmanians had no way of making fire, no boomerangs or spear throwers, no specialized
stone tools, no axes with handles, no canoes, no sewing needles, and no ability to fish. Amazingly,
the archaeological record shows that their ancestors from the Australian mainland had arrived
with these technologies ten thousand years before." p.69
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"So the rumor that neural networks can replace mental structure with statistical learning
is not true." p.83
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...[mechanisms] ensure that despite variable environments, a constant organ develops, on that is
capable of doing its job." p.90
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"The study of humans from an evolutionary perspective has shown that many psychological faculties (such as
our hunger for fatty food, for social status, and for risky sexual liaisons) are better adapted to
the evolutionary demands of our ancestral environment than to the actual demands of the
current environment." p.101
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"...no one even talks about "sociobiology" or "selfish genes" anymore, because the ideas
are part and parcel of the science."
p.135
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
"Many cognitive scientists believe that human reasoning is not accomplished by a single,
general-purpose computer in the head. The world is a heterogeneous place, and we are
equipped with different kinds of intuitions and logics, each appropriate to one department
of reality. These ways of knowing have been called systems, modules, stances, faculties,
mental organs, multiple intelligences, and reasoning engines. They emerge early in life, are
present in every normal person, and appear to be computed in partly distinct sets
of networks in the brain. They may be installed by different combinations of genes, or
they may emerge when brain tissue self-organizes in response to different problems
to be solved and different patterns in the sensory input. Most likely they develop by a combination of these
forces.
...Each faculty is based on a core intuition that was suitable for analyzing the world in which we evolved....
- An intuitive physics....
- An intuitive version of biology or natural history....
- An intuitive engineering....
- An intuitive psychology....
- A spacial sense....
- A number sense....
- A sense of probability....
- An intuitive economics....
- A mental database and logic....
- Language....
" p.220
Steven Pinker, 2002, THE BLANK SLATE
The Faculty of Language: What's special about it? with Ray Jackendoff
""
The Faculty of Language: What's special about it? with Ray Jackendoff
JAMES GLEICK
"Nonlinearity [in mathematics] means that the act of playing the game
has a way of changing the rules." p.24
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Few laymen realized how tightly compartmentalized the scientific community had become....
Biologists had enough to read without keeping up with the mathematics literature -- for that matter,
the molecular biologists had enough to read without keeping up with population
biology. Physicists had
better ways to spend their time than sifting through meteorology journals. Some
mathematicians would have been
excited to see Lorenz's discovery." p.31
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Thomas Kuhn describes a disturbing experiment....
Shown [quickly] a red six of spades, they [the subject scientists] would sing out
either "six of hearts" or "six of spades"....
Eventually, as the pace slowed even more, most subjects would catch on.
They would see the wrong cards
and make the mental shift necessary to play the game without error. Not
everyone, though. A few suffered
a sense of disorientation that brought real pain. "I can't make that suit
out, whatever it is," said one.
..."I'm not ever sure what a spade looks like. My God!" p.35
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Often a revolution has an interdisciplinary character --
its central discoveries often come from people
straying outside the normal bounds of their specialties. The problems
that obsess these theorists are not recognized
as legitimate lines of inquiry. Thesis proposals are turned down or
articles are refused publication.
...it has occurred in real life, time and time again, in the
exploration of chaos." p.37
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize
their picture of the world provoke
hostility." p.38
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
Galileo phrased his claim in terms experimentation, but the theory
made it convincing - so much so that it is still taught as gospel in most
highschool physic courses. But it is wrong. The regularity Galileo saw
(in pendulums) is only an approximation. ...
Small nonlinearities were
easy to disregard. People who conduct experiments learn quickly that they
live in an imperfect world. ... Any experimentalist looks for quantities
that remain the same, or quantities that are zero. But that means disregarding
bits of messiness that interfere with a neat picture. ...
To get his neat results,
Galileo also had to disregard nonlinearities that he knew of: friction
and air resistance. ... a story about changing intuitions by inventing
an ideal scientific world where regularities can be separated from the
disorder of experience." p.41
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Students...learned (in class) that nonlinear systems were usually
unsolvable, which was true, and that they tended to be exceptions - which
was not true." p.42
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"...disorderly behavior of simple systems acted as a creative process." p.43
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"...Stephan Smale...was looking at nonlinear oscillators, chaotic
oscillators, and seeing things that physicists had learned not to see". p.45
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"(Jupiter's Red Spot) The spot became a gestalt test. Scientists saw what
their intuitions allowed them to see. A fluid dynamicist who thought of turbulence
as random and noisy had no context for understanding an island of stability in
their midst." p.54
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"The whole point of oversimplifying was to model regularity. Why go to
all that trouble just to see chaos?" p.65
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"....most numbers are irrational and unpredictable in
their fine detail...." p.66
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"(James) York felt that physicists had learned not to see chaos." p.67
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Most differential equations cannot be solved at all." p.67
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Only a few were able to remember that the solvable, orderly, linear
systems were the aberrations. Only a few,that is, understood how nonlinear
nature is in its soul." p.68
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"...York said, 'They're running a physical experiment, and this
experiment behaves in an erratic manner. They try to fix it or they give up.
They explain the erratic behavior by saying there's noise, or just that the
experiment is bad.' " p.68
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"...(For Robert May) simple equations could not represent reality perfectly.
He knew they were just metaphors...." p.77
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
"Above all, fractal meant self-similar.
...
because they look the same even under high magnification." p.103
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
James Gleick, Chaos, 1987
LEDA COSMIDES
"Organisms that don't move, don't have brains. Trees don't have brains, bushes don't have brains,
flowers don't have brains. In fact, there are some animals that don't move during certain stages
of their lives. And during those stages, they don't have brains. The sea squirt, for example, is
an aquatic animal that inhabits oceans. During the early stage of its life cycle, the sea squirt
swims around looking for a good place to attach itself permanently. Once it finds the right rock,
and attaches itself to it, it doesn't need its brain anymore because it will never need to move
again. So it eats (resorbs) most of its brain. After all, why waste energy on a now useless
organ? Better to get a good meal out of it.
In short, the circuits of the brain are designed to generate motion -- behavior -- in response
to information from the environment. The function of your brain -- this wet computer -- is to generate
behavior that is appropriate to your environmental circumstances.
Principle 2. Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our
ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history."
Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer, 1997
"Unfortunately, some have misrepresented the well-supported claim that selection creates functional
organization as the obviously false claim that all traits of organisms are funtional -- something
no sensible evolutionary biologist would ever maintain. Furthermore, not all behavior engaged in by
organisms is adaptive."
Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer, 1997
"Certain fish can change sex, for example. Blue-headed wrasse live in social groups consisting of one
male and many females. If the male dies, the largest female turns into a male. The wrasse (Which one?)
are designed to change sex in response to a social cue -- the presence or absence of a male."
Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer, 1997
"EPs [Evolutionary Psychologists] expect the human mind will be found to contain
a large number of information-processing
devices that are domain-specific and functionally specialized.
...
Most EPs acknowledge the multipurpose flexibility of human thought and action, but believe this is caused by a
cognitive achitecture that contains a large number of evolved 'expert systems'."
Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer, 1997
"The results of these investigations were striking. People who ordinarily cannot detect violations
of if-then rules can do so easily and accurately when that violation represents cheating
in a situation of social exchange (Cosmides, 1985, 1989; Cosmides & Tooby, 1989; 1992).
...
No formal training is needed. Whenever the content of a problem asks subjects to look for
cheaters in a social exchange -- even when the situation described is culturally unfamiliar and
even bizarre -- subjects experience the problem as simple to solve, and their performance jumps
dramatically."
Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer, 1997
CORDELIA FINE
"While it troubles philosophers, for the rest of us it is vastly more comfortable
that we can only know ourselves and the world through the distorting prism of our brains." p.6
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"If a trait or skill that you're being asked about is helpfully ambiguous, you interpret the
question to suit your own idiosyncratic strengths."
...This self-serving bias, as it is known, is all too easy to demonstrate in the psychology lab." p.7
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Failure is perhaps the greatest enemy of the ego, and that's why the vain brain does its best to
barricade the door against this unwelcome guest." p.8
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"If the self-concept you are wearing no longer suits your motives, the brain simply slips into
something more comfortable. The willing assistant in this process is memory. It has the knack
of pulling out personal memories that better fit the new circumstances." p.12
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"On the whole, it seems we are content to employ the sloppiest of reasoning . . . until
some threat to our motives appears, at which point we suddenly acquire the strictest possible
methodological standards." p.15
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
" As with anything that threatens our egos, we push absurdly high standards
for evidence that might challenge our rosy beliefs." p.16
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...we are even more susceptible to the self-flattering impression that we are
responsible for how things turned out [even when we have zero control], when they turn out well. " p.20
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Even in the betting booth, where people put their hard-earned money where their mouth is,
judgment is swayed by desire." p.22
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Although the [experiment's dart] teams were put together in an entirely
haphazard fashion, the flame of fellow feeling was nonetheless sparked." p.22
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"There is in fact a category of people who get unusually close to the truth
about themselves and the world. ... They are the clinically depressed." p.23
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"While the volunteers played the game, the researcher monitored their emotional
responses." p.34
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The pattern of winning and losing was too complicated for the volunteers to
calculate which decks were the best. Yet by the end of the experiment, nearly all the
volunteers were choosing from the winning packs. They had developed hunches about which
decks to avoid. ...Only after the volunteers started showing...warning emotional jolts
did they develop their gut feeling.... " p.34
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"In the game, as in life, the patients made poor decisions [due to emotion malfunction].... " p.36
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The problem is that our bodies produce a one-size-fits-all emotional response. " p.37
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Because the arousal is the same whatever the emotion...you brain has the job of
matching the arousal with the right thoughts. " p.38
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...as the weather-sensitive telephone survey experiment shows, at least we can
sometimes protect ourselves from the undulations of our humor, so long as we are aware of being
off our usual emotional keel. " p.42
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Our visual experiences are so compelling, so real, and seemingly that it is
hard to acknowledge the furtive role played by the [emotions in the] brain in creating what we
see. " p.43
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"There is empirical proof that we can be almost literally blinded ... By liking and
disliking. " p.43
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...what psychologists call depersonalization. ...You feel detached from
your thoughts, feelings, and body, and the world may seem dreamy and unreal. Once the coast
is clear your brain brings you back again...." p.48
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...depersonalization is an extremely unpleasant state to be in.... As one
patient put it, 'I would rather be dead than continue living like this. It's like the
living dead.' .... 'I feel as though I'm not alive...'
This is what suggests that it
is our emotional brain that gives us our sense of self. It is our feeling, no matter how
trivial, that let us know we are alive." p.50-51
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Cotard patients may deny that they world even exists [they also see
themselves as dead]." p.51
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The path of righteousness is plain as day--it corresponds exactly to
what my son wants." p.55
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...(...the brain is disturbingly adept at supplying a conveniently biased array of
evidence and argument to bolster its opinions.) This gives us the satisfying though
often illusory impression that our morals are based on reasoned and logical thought...." p.57
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...this interfering effect of emotions can also wreck havoc on our
moral judgements." p.58
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"And what of the martyr, who [among the fake victims] sacrificed
herself to benefit others? She, I'm afraid to say, is the most despised [by the subjects]
of all." p.63
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...[The brain] is careful to apply double standards whenever
necessary." p.64
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...our moral backbone can be snapped like the flimsiest reed." p.67-68
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...although they [psychology students] were all well-versed in the self-conceits to which
we are all susceptible, their self-portraiture, as they imagined themselves...was no less
flattering than that of students unschooled...." p.72
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...this knowledge [of self-deception] is almost impossible to apply to
oneself. " p.73
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The masterful hypocrisy of the immoral brain demands a certain
grudging respect. It lazily applies nothing but the most superficial and disapproving
analysis to others' misdemeanors, while bending over backward to reassure
that you can do no wrong." p.75
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...cognitive dissonance, as it is known,... " p.77
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"We can persuade ourselves that, really, there is no ethical
dimension at all to the situation in which we find ourselves." p.77
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Am I happy with my social life?...This the point at which you trawl through
your store of self-knowledge searching for evidence that the hypothesis in question is
correct. ...
Phrase the question the other way around, however, and your memory throws
up a very different heap of evidence. " [on positive test strategy] p.82
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Your brain has a sneaky tendency to see the correlations that it
expects to see, but which aren't actually there." p.84
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"In short, they [subjects] saw what wasn't there....
With a deceptively convincing hypothesis embedded in your skull, it's
only one short step for your brain to start seeing evidence for that hypothesis. ...
Your poor, deluded grey matter sees what it expects to see, not what is actually there." p.87
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Once acquired, even the most erroneous beliefs enjoy and undeserved degree of protection
from rejection and revision. So, what with our proclivity toward seeking evidence that
whichever hypothesis we happen to be entertaining, our penchant for simply inventing
supporting evidence, and our pigheaded retention of beliefs, it's easy to see how our
unsound scientific strategies can have unhappy consequences. It all bodes very ill for
the accuracy of the beliefs to which we are led." p.89
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Our agitation does not come prelabled--we have to match it up with a likely trigger." p.98
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The same sorts of tricks that keep us big headed also underlie our tendancy to be pigheaded. ... Even
the most hastily formed opinion receives undeserved protection from revision....I think what I like
most about everything you'll find in this chapter is that if you find it unconvincing, that simply
serves better to prove its point. " p.106
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Inevitably, sooner or later, we will be confronted with challenges to our
beliefs....Yet even in the face of counter evidence, our beliefs are protected as tenderly as our egos." p.107
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Just one X-ray of an unborn baby doubled the risk of childhood cancer. A mere
twenty-four years later, the major US medical associations officially recommended that [it] ...should no
longer be routine....
...we find research convincing and sound if the results happen to confirm
our point of view. However, we will find the exact same research method shoddy and flawed if the results
fail to agree with our opinions." p.108
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Yet a graph that contradicts the beliefs, publications, and career of a scientist
is anything but a 'plain fact', which is why scientific papers, identical in all respects but the result,
are far more likely to be found to be flawed and unpublishable if the findings disagree with the
reviewer's Own theoretical viewpoint." p.109 [Mahoney M J ,1977]
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Exactly the same experimental setup reliably yields different results depending on
the beliefs of the researcher who is running the experiment and interacting with the participants. In
fact even rats are susceptible to the expectations of experimenters." p.112-113
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"There is something really very eerie about the power of other people's beliefs
to control you without your knowledge. But there is little you can do to protect yourself against
an enemy whose potency resides in its very imperceptibility." p.114
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"To bid a belief adieu is to lose a cherished portion of our identity." p.115-116
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...effusive flattery dulls the sword of an intellectual opponent far more effectively
than mere logical argument." p.116
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"In fact, even people told beforehand that the suicide hadn't actually happened,
nonetheless found their theories about why a suicide might have occurred so very convincing
that they, too, pegged Shirley K. as a high suicide risk. ...
...As before, some of the volunteers were then left free to ruin wild with theories to explain
their supposed level of social sensitivity. When later told that the feedback they had been
given [praising them] had been fabricated, they nonetheless continued to cling to their newfound
belief about their social abilities.... Something very different happened, however, with a
second group of volunteers who were prevented from searching for explanations for their
allegedly good or bad performance on the task. ... Denied the opportunity to rummage in their
brains for other evidence to support their flimsy belief about their social sensitivity, they
sensibly abandoned the belief as soon as they learned that it was based on lies. " p.120-121
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The brain also lays claim to knowledge of what it cannot know. " p.126
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The real bad news is that even our relatively rare moments of conscious
choice may be nothing but an illusion." p.131
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"But what if the unconscious could itself trigger the very act of willing,
setting itself off in the pursuit of a goal without any conscious command from above? ...a
curve in the road triggers the unconscious to adjust the steering.... In a similar way, as
we become experienced navigators of the social highway, the people and situations we encounter
automatically trigger our unconscious to adjust our social steering in line with well-practiced
goals, without us even knowing." p.132
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"If this is one of your goals...'But what would mother say?' you strive to
be and do better. So what the helpful unconscious does is to automatically set you the goal....
You, in the meantime--the unconscious you, that is--are completely unaware that you're acting
under the influence of a hidden agenda." p.133
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Schemas make up the filing system of your mind. Cognitive psychologists think
that just about everything about the world is neatly tidied away into a schema." p.133
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...the researchers primed the mother schema in some of the volunteers by
asking them several questions about their mother.... In other words, they shook awake all
the brain cells involved with information about mother: major life events, interests, and
values. The researchers knew that this would also disturb the brain cells concerned
with 'mother: goals pertaining to,' which would all be lying somewhere in the same bed." p.134
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...seemingly trivial things in our environment may be influencing our behavior.
Dormant goals are triggered without our even realizing. It's not that we're necessarily unaware
of the stimulus itself. However, we are oblivious to the effect that it is having on us. ....the
song you heard on the radio....all of which may be changing the course of your life in their own,
modest way. ... Any sort of schema can be primed. And when it is, our behavior changes to suit
it. ... People who had rearrange word related to old people actually behaved like stooped old
fogies themselves...." p.136-137
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...we often have no great insight into the mysterious cog-turnings from
which our opinions spring. But, control freaks as we are, we do feel the need to cling to the
illusion that we know what is going on." p.140
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...we infer motives from anything around us." p.142
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...in fact it was the unrewarded children who spent more time
playing with the pens. The reason, according to self-perception theory, is this. When the
children saw this optional pastime spread out on the tabletops for the second time, they
had to decide whether they wanted to play with them. And so their brains asked
themselves, 'How do I like drawing with felt tip pens?' The brains of the children
in the unrewarded group answered along the lines of, 'Well...I guess I enjoyed it....'
But the brains of the kids in the rewarded group replied, 'Damn it, not stinckin' pens
again. ...that was only to get the star and ribbon....' " p.143-144
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...the unconscious was already busy preparing for the finger
movement well before the idea occurred to consciousness. ...
...who (or what) ordered
the finger to move? ...Was it our hypothetical secret commander?"p.147
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you,
and more powerful than you. It may even control you. You will never know all of its secrets." p.150
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...in short, anything that requires concentrated thought--all deplete the
same pool of mental resources. ...With your inner battery dangerously low...the will may be
reluctant to do anything except put its feet up once you get home. " p.155
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"According to ironic process theory, both you (the conscious you, that is) and
your unconscious mental processes work together to keep unwanted thoughts out of mind.
...
Unfortunately...the mental butler...actually primes the very sorts of thoughts it is looking
for. ... This...ironically makes these thoughts more likely to reach consciousness. When the
conscious self is in top form, with no other business to see to, this is easily dealt with.
...By trying to control our thoughts, we actually plant the seeds of our own undoing, as
Wegner, the author of the theory, puts it." p.164-165
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Keeping life simple, calm, and sensibly paced may be a necessity rather
than an indulgence, if we are to keep our thoughts under control, suggests Daniel Wegner." p.171
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Remember from the previous chapter that goals, acted on over and over in
particular situations, come to be automatically set off by cues in the environment. For
example, without even realizing it, people who thought it was important to make mother proud
worked harder on a word task after thinking (being primed) about mom." p.172
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...props carefully chosen to set the women's unconscious working in a
particular way." p.172
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"What is more,the goals of the diet schema also primed...." p.173
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Stereotypes are a subgroup of the schemas that we met in Chapter 6, the
filing system the brain uses to organize information into various categories." p.179
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"Indeed, so pernicious is the stereotype of the dangerous black man that it
influenced black participants in just the same way: they showed just the same racial bias in
the experiment." p.182
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"What this means with regards to the real world is that no-holds-barred
stereotyped portrayals of people will unconsciously affect the judgements for everyone, not
just the bigot." p.183
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...the volunteers were asked to play a quiz game...." p.185
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...the image that gets bounced back is more a reflection of your own behavior
than of his or her true qualities. Yet your role in this horrible distortion goes undetected."
p.186
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"The problem is that we need the efficiency that schemas buy us. Schemas provide
a quick means of extracting and interpreting information from the complicated world around us, of
forming useful generalizations, and making helpful predictions. ...Yet this speed comes at the cost...of
accuracy, particularly when our schemas fail to reflect reality truthfully." p.198
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"For it seems that we may be able to train our brain to replace its spontaneous
prejudices with more acceptable reflexes." p.199
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"In a striking real world demonstration of the vulnerability of belief to the
psychological context..." p.203
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"...he moved to Seattle because his name is Sean? Even as we make some of the most
important decisions of our lives, we are being unwittingly swayed by the brain's capricious concerns. ...
... We are, to some extent, at the mercy of whatever schemas are primed within us." p.205
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006
"It is far easier to apply the lessons of the research described here to
others than to oneself.
...
Above all, we should try to remain alert always to the distortions and deceptions of our wayward
brains. For they are always with us." p.209 end
Cordelia Fine, A Mind of its Own, 2006 W.W.Norton, NY NY
TOM SIEGFRIED all from A Beautiful Math
...there are many research enterprises underway in the world today that share the goal
of better understanding human behavior in order to forsee the future. (TOM SIEGFRIED A Beautiful Math p.1)
...put enough people together and the laws of human interaction will produce
predictable patterns.... ...network math quantified how "connected" members of a social group are.
...statistical physics has been enlisted to describe human society in a mathematically precise way.
For the most part, this merger of network math and statistical mechanics
has been exploring human behavior without recourse to the modern views of game theory
built of Nash's math. After all, Nash's original formulation had its limits; what works on paper
does not always play out the way his math predicts in real world games. But the latest research
has begun to show the ways that game theory can help makes sense out the intricate patterns of
links in complicated networks. (TOM SIEGFRIED A Beautiful Math p.5)
Wolpert's insight suggests that game theory itself can be elevated to a new level by exploiting
its link to statistical mechanics. his work shows that the math of game theory can be recast in
equations that mimic those used by statical physicist to describe
all sorts of physical systems. In other words, at some deep level statistical mechanics and game
theory are, in sense, two versions of the same underlying idea. And that
may end up making game theory an especially sensitive social thermometer.
This new realization -- that game theory and statistical mechanics share a deep mathematical unity
-- enhances game theory's status as the preferred tool for merging the life sciences and physical science
into a unified description a nature. After all, there's a reason why game theory has been embraced
by so many disciplines. game theory could someday become the glue that holds all of
science's puzzle pieces together.
...competitive interactions is precisely what game theory
is all about.
So it should not be surprising that game theory
has been so useful in evolutionary biology. Game theory is about competition, and evolution is the ultimate
never-ending Olympic event. And if evolution followed game theory's rules in generating
complicated life, it no doubt also observed the same rules in developing the human brain. So it's
perfectly natural that game theory has become popular today in efforts
to understand how the brain works, as brain scientists explore the neural physiology behind
economic choices. (TOM SIEGFRIED A Beautiful Math p.6)
... Just as complexities of life arose through eons of survival of the fittest,
human culture evolves as societies or governments rise and fall;
economies evolve as companies are founded and go bankrupt; even
the world wide web evolves as pages are added and links expire. So
Nash's math does seem capable of catalyzing a merger of methods
for understanding individual behavior, biology, and society. (TOM SIEGFRIED A Beautiful Math p.7)
...Nash's math provides the foundation of a modern-day Code of Nature. But of course it's not
as simple as that. Since its inception, game theory has had a complicated and controversial history.
Today it is worshipped by some but still ridiculed by others. Some experimenters
claim that their results refute game theory; other claim that the experiments
expand game theory and refine it. In any event, game theory has assumed
such a prominent role in so many realms of science that it can no longer
be intelligently ignored, as it often was in its early days. (TOM SIEGFRIED A Beautiful Math p.52)
Yet it was also clear from the outset that the original theory of games was severely limited.
Von Neumann had mastered two-person zero-sum games, but introducing
multiple players led to problems. ( p.53)
In any event, game theory describing many players interacting in non-zero-sum
situation -- that is, game theory applicable to real life -- needed something more than the
original Theory of Games had to offer. And that's what
John Nash provided. (p.54)
...in an economy all the people a seeking to maximize their utility. A chemical
reaction reach an equilibrium enforced by the laws of thermodynamics;
an economy should reach a Nash equilibrium dictated by game theory.
Real life isn't quite that simple, of course. (p.60)