A Quote by Richard Dawkins

The beauty of evolution is that it does provide an explanation of how you can get complexity out of simplicity. It does it by slow, gradual degree. At no point are you postulating the sudden coming into existence of a complicated being.

Richard Dawkins

Quote Author

Richard Dawkins
English - Scientist
Born: March 26, 1941

If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!

Richard Dawkins

Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Alan Perlis

Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that.

Richard Dawkins

Darwinian evolution is slow and gradual, step by step. Such an evolution can explain micro-evolution but not macro-evolution. For example, how did the eye evolve? The idea behind Darwinism is that organisms adapt, and that nature selects only those genetic changes which are the mutations that serve a good purpose for adaptation. So taken this way, the eye cannot develop gradually because one-thousandth or one-millionth of an eye would be of no value for survival. So generally this question rules out Darwinism as an adequate theory for macro-evolution.

Ricky Ray

My laboratory uses evolution to design new enzymes. No one really knows how to design them - they are tremendously complicated. But we are learning how to use evolution to make new ones, just as nature does.

Frances Arnold

He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire.

Greg Iles

Complexity has nothing to do with intelligence, simplicity does.

Lawrence Bossidy

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Alan Perlis

The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To a certain degree, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of those has about 10,000 connections.

Francis Collins

According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another.

Ernst Mayr

That’s the thing about change. It can be gradual. Slow and almost unnoticeable. Or it can be sudden, and you don’t even know how you could’ve been any other way.

Penelope Douglas

A line partakes of the simplicity of a point more than does a surface; and a surface [partakes thereof more] than does a material object-as was evident. From this consideration of a point and a material object elevate yourself unto a likeness of True Being and of the universe; and by means of [this] quite clear symbolism [of a point] make a conjecture about what has been said.

Nicholas of Cusa

To my mind, the theory of [evolution] does not stand up at all. If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation [i.e., time, chance, and chemistry], how has it come into being? I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation.

Henry Lipson

Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

Carlo M. Cipolla

Sometimes a slow gradual approach does more good than a large gesture.

Craig Newmark

When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

Elif Batuman

A Quote by Richard Dawkins

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