A Quote by Michael Pollan
Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.
Related Quotes
Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.
It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.
Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose.
There are no accidents, all things have a deep and calculated purpose; sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled.
Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.
The beautiful in nature is the unmarred result of God's first creative or forming will,and ..the beautiful in art is the result of an unmistaken working of man in accordance with the beautiful in nature.
To the designer, great design is beautiful design. A significant amount of effort must be placed into making the product attractive. To the client, great design is effective. It must bring in customers and meet the goals put forth to the designer in the original brief. To the user, great design is functional. It’s easy to read, easy to use and easy to get out of it what was promised Truly great design, then, is when these three perspectives are considered and implemented equally to create a final product that is beautiful, effective and functional.
Natural Selection is not Evolution. Yet, ever since the two words have been in common use, the theory of Natural Selection has been employed as a convenient abbreviation for the theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection, put forward by Darwin and Wallace. This has had the unfortunate consequence that the theory of Natural Selection itself has scarcely ever, if ever, received separate consideration.
Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection.
The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."
Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection.
Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works.
You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.
We see that God has implanted in all things a natural desire to exist with the fullest measure of existence that is compatible with their particular nature. To this end they are endowed with suitable faculties and activities; and by means of these there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfilment in that object towards which it is attracted by the weight of its own nature.
It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.
The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit.
Related Authors
Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes
American
Educator
Bill Nye Quotes
American
Educator
Cornel West Quotes
American
Educator
Dean Ornish Quotes
American
Educator
Horace Mann Quotes
American
Educator
Jeffrey R. Holland Quotes
American
Educator
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes
American
Educator
Ken Robinson Quotes
English
Educator
Lucy Maud Montgomery Quotes
Canadian
Educator
Maria Montessori Quotes
Italian
Educator
Paulo Freire Quotes
Brazilian
Educator
Peter Kreeft Quotes
American
Educator
Randy Pausch Quotes
American
Educator
Stephen Covey Quotes
American
Educator
Temple Grandin Quotes
American
Educator
Timothy Leary Quotes
American
Educator