Top 6 Quotes & Sayings by Pierre-Paul Grasse

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French author Pierre-Paul Grasse.
Last updated on November 9, 2024.
Pierre-Paul Grasse

Pierre-Paul Grassé was a French zoologist, writer of over 300 publications including the influential 52-volume Traité de Zoologie. He was an expert on termites and one of the last proponents of neo-Lamarckian evolution.

French - Author | 1895 - 1985
From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjecture as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct.
We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution.
No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution. — © Pierre-Paul Grasse
No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.
Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems.
The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs.
To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts.
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