Because, as an epigraph of his Treatise on Animal Generation, he wrote the celebrated ‘Omnia ex ovo’, Harvey is often credited with
the concept that every living being comes from an egg. But for Harvey, ‘ovum’ denoted more than ‘egg’. It was any
substance already organised to some degree — putrefying meat, rotten plants, excrement,
the pupa or chrysalis of insects; in short, anything from which a living being could
be seen to emerge, whether quadruped, fly, worm or plant.
— Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973),
53.
But there is a question about all these kinds of beasts, which
are neither tamed by man, nor spring from the earth like frogs, such as wolves and
others of that sort, … as to how they could find their way to the islands after
that flood which destroyed every living thing not preserved in the ark … Some, indeed,
might be thought to reach islands by swimming, in case these were very near; but
some islands are so remote from continental lands that it does not seem possible
that any creature could reach them by swimming. It is not an incredible thing, either,
that some animals may have been captured by men and taken with them to those lands
which they intended to inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting;
and it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished through the
agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this labour by God.
— St Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430).
For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that
house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons. In the
first place, the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house-dove,
against the usual rule of domestication, which generally enlarges the breed.
— Gilbert White (1720 – 1793), The Natural
History of Selborne, (1789), Letter XLIV.
The connecting link between apes and men, they have generally
less resemblance to the African negro than the New Zealanders, and, particularly
when old, resemble the monkey more than any other human beings do. In stature, they
are generally above the middle size, and their bodies bear an apish proportion to
their legs, those limbs being shorter than the European’s, while the arms appear
longer.
— O’Connell, James F., A residence of Eleven
Years in New Holland and the Caroline Islands. Boston: B. B. Mussey, 1836, facsimile
edition published by Australian National University Press, 1972, pages 90-91. [O’Connell
was almost certainly not his name: he seems deliberately to muddy the waters and
confuse the issue, so as to avoid identification. He was presumably an escaped convict,
but he obviously had spent some time in Sydney.]
Another unpleasant class of neighbours were the native dogs or
dingoes, evidently a species of wolf, or perhaps the connecting link between the
wolf and the dog. These creatures were very numerous around us, and their howling
or yelling at night in the neighbouring forests had a most dismal, unearthly kind
of tone. They are more the figure of a Scotch colly, or sheep-dog, than any other
I can think of as a comparison, but considerably larger, taller, and more gaunt-looking,
with shaggy, wiry hair, and most often of a sandy colour. Their appearance is altogether
wolfish, and the expression of the head especially so, nor do their ferocious habits
by any means weaken the likeness.
— Louise Ann (Mrs Charles) Meredith, Notes
and Sketches of New South Wales. London: John Murray, 1844, and Ringwood: Penguin
Books, 1973, pages 132-133.
Bother variation, development and all such subjects! it is reasoning
in a circle I believe after all. As a Botanist, I must be content to take species
as they appear to be, not as they are, and still less as they were, or
ought to be.
— Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 – 1911), letter to Charles Darwin, July 1845, quoted
in W. B. Turrill, Joseph Dalton Hooker,
83.
At the place where this battle was fought I saw a very odd thing,
which the natives had told me about. The bones still lay there, those of the Persian
dead separate from those of the Egyptians, just as they were originally divided,
and I noticed that the skulls of the Persians are so thin that the merest touch
of a pebble will pierce them, but those of the Egyptians, on the other hand, are
so tough that it is hardly possible to break them with a blow from a stone. I was
told, very credibly, that the reason was that the Egyptians shave their heads from
childhood, so that the bone of the skull is indurated by the action of the sun —
this is also why they hardly ever go bald, baldness being rarer in Egypt than anywhere
else. This, then, explains the thickness of their skulls; and the thinness of the
Persians’ skulls rests upon a similar principle: namely that they have always worn
felt skull-caps to guard their heads from the sun.
— Herodotus (c. 480 BCE – 425 BCE), The Histories,
Book 3, Penguin Classics, 207.
Of the accidental varieties of man which would occur among the
first few and scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa, some one would
be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race
would subsequently multiply, while the others would decrease, not only from their
inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of contending
with their more vigorous neighbours. The colour of this vigorous race I take for
granted, from what has already been said, would be dark.
— W. C. Wells, writing in 1818, quoted by Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002), The Flamingo’s Smile, Penguin 1991, 344.
Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon
to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance.
Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), Mysticism
and Logic, 1917.
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly
high degree of improbability.
— Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890 – 1962).
For a long time, people have wondered what would have become
of scientific thought if Newton had been an apple-gatherer, Darwin a sea-captain,
or Einstein a plumber (as he said he would have preferred to be). At worst, there
might have been a few years’ delay in the development of the theories of gravity
or relativity, and even less in the development of the theory of evolution.
— Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973),
pp 11-12.
Darwin puzzled over these ‘correlations of growth’ and recognised
that many features may offer no direct benefit, yet still characterise large groups
by their forced physiological relationship with other traits. Extreme versions of
Darwinism have forgotten this subtlety and have tried to find direct adaptive advantages,
often by purely speculative argument, for nearly every widespread feature.
— Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002), The Flamingo’s
Smile, Penguin 1991, 342.
Breeders believe that long limbs are almost always accompanied
by an elongated head. Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical: thus cats
with blue eyes are invariably deaf; colour and constitutional peculiarities go together,
of which many remarkable cases could be given amongst animals and plants … it appears
that white sheep and pigs are differently affected from coloured individuals by
certain vegetable poisons. Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth … pigeons with feathered
feet have skin between their toes … Hence, if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting,
any peculiarity, he will almost certainly unconsciously modify other parts of the
structure, owing to the mysterious laws of the correlation of growth.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1st edition, 1859, pp. 11-12.
Whatever their specialties, all biologists deal with organisms,
cells or molecules, all biologists today sooner or later have to interpret the results
of their investigations in the light of the theory of evolution.
— Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973),
pp. 13-14.
Compared with what we think of as long periods in our everyday
calculations, there must have been enormous time and considerable variations in
circumstances for nature to lead the organisation of animals to the degree of complexity
and development that we see today.
— Chevalier de Lamarck (1744 – 1829), Philosophie
Zoologique.
In the long run, it is because of the ruggedness of the earth’s
crust that the living forms on earth have been preserved. Without this geographical
diversity, there would be no verdure, none of the lushness we see in the country
and the forests.
— Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973).
… when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks
into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly
and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honour
and aspiration.
— George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), Preface
to Back to Methuselah, arguing against
‘Darwinism’, as he thought he understood it.
A camera is no more a copy of an eye than the wing of a bird
is a copy of that of an insect. Each is the product of an independent evolution;
and if this has brought the camera and the eye together, it is not because one has
mimicked the other, but because both have had to meet the same problems, and frequently
have done so in the same way.
— George Wald, ‘Eye and Camera’, Scientific
American Reader (1953), 555.
The ‘walking-leaf’ and ‘walking-stick’ insects are further examples
of minute imitation, the former, when resting on the foliage which forms their food,
being quite indistinguishable to ordinary observation from the surrounding leaves,
while the latter are perfect imitations of dead sticks … in America there is a long-horned
beetle which so closely mimics a particular kind of wasp, found in the same neighbourhood,
that Mr. Bates was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of
being stung.
— John Gibson, Science Gleanings in Many Fields,
London, 1884.
I established the opposite view, that this history of the embryo
(ontogeny) must be completed by a second, equally valuable, and closely connected
branch of thought – the history of race (phylogeny). Both of these branches of evolutionary
science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from
the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation... ‘ontogenesis is
a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis, determined by the physiological
functions of heredity (generation) and adaptation (maintenance).’
— Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919), Riddle of the
Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, 1899.
… it is equally preposterous to account for the structure of
[the mistletoe], with its relations to several distinct organic beings, by the effects
of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1st edition, 1859, 3.
In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and greatest
difficulties on the theory will be given …
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1st edition, 1859, 5.
… the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly
entertained — namely, that each species has been independently created — is erroneous.
I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to
what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally
extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species
are descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection
has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1st edition, 1859, 6.
The great and inherited development of the udders in cows and
goats in countries where they are habitually milked, in comparison with the state
of these organs in other countries, is another instance of the effect of use. Not
a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears;
and the view suggested by some authors, that the drooping is due to the disuse of
the muscles of the ear, from the animals not being much alarmed by danger, seems
probable.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1st edition, 1859, 11.
If a single well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500
million years-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed.
Incidentally, this is sufficient answer to the canard, put about by creationists
and their journalistic fellow travellers, that the whole theory of evolution is
an ‘unfalsifiable’ tautology. Ironically, it is also why creationists are so keen
on the fake human footprints, which were carved during the depression to fool tourists,
in the dinosaur beds of Texas.
— Richard Dawkins (1941 – ), The Blind Watchmaker,
Penguin Books, 1988, 225.
Darwin’s theory, as a statement about adaptation to immediate
environments (not general progress or global direction), predicts that form should
follow function to establish good fit for peculiar life styles.
— Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002), The Flamingo’s
Smile, Penguin 1991, 25.
To the east lies New Zealand, a country dominated by its isolation
which, in terms of migratory behaviour, results in a high degree of immobility.
The generally mild climate also contributes to the insularity of the species found
there.
— Matthieu Ricard, The Mystery of Animal Migration,
Paladin, 1971, 94.
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