A Quote by John Maynard Smith

This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.

John Maynard Smith

Quote Topics

Argument Arise Assembling Biologist Blowing Boeing Chance Complex Discussion Essentially Improbable Junkyard Latest Life Life Is Likelihood Manifestation Repeatedly Single Single Step Step Structures Through Too Up Wind Wind Blowing Wrong

Quote Author

John Maynard Smith
British - Scientist
January 6, 1920 - April 19, 2004

I had a great life at Boeing. I'd been there for 37 years and contributed to all the Boeing airplanes as a designer: the 707, 727, 37, 47, 57, 67 and 'triple 7' and the 87.

Alan Mulally

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.

Fred Hoyle

One of the biggest issues with renewables right now is the fact that if the wind isn't blowing, if the sun isn't shining, we don't have energy. Many people are working on storage technology so when the wind isn't blowing, we can use the energy stored in our giant batteries, essentially. But what happens if we don't have enough stored energy?

Katharine Hayhoe

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.

Fred Hoyle

We need to stop defining Boeing's future based on a single program or two programs, and we have been doing that with the fighter story. It doesn't mean it was wrong or right; I just don't think it represents the great diversity of the Boeing Defense portfolio.

Leanne Caret

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747

Richard Dawkins

I'm trying to find peace in the world, as it is. I'm feeling this sort of slow stripping of my mind, like the layers of an onion. I'm starting to see through all these little structures that have been imposed on me by my society that tell me how I'm supposed to view my life and the world. What I'm supposed to find to be important and what is not. Sometimes you see through so much of it that you feel like you're just a leaf blowing on the wind.

Jeff Mangum

If Boeing got a big head start on the 707 from multibillion-dollar military contracts to develop an air force transport, is that a sin against free trade?

Robert Kuttner

Loud wind, strong wind, sweeping o'er the mountains, Fresh wind, free wind, blowing from the sea, Pour forth thy vials like streams from airy mountains, Draughts of life to me.

Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me! A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

D. H. Lawrence

It is no more likely that our world has evolved out of chaos than that a hurricane, blowing through a junk yard, should create a Boeing.

Fred Hoyle

Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.

Dick Morris

My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.

Penelope Williamson

Although a biologist, I must confess I do not understand how life came about... I consider that life only starts at the level of a functional cell. The most primitive cells may require at least several hundred different specific biological macro-molecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem.

Werner Arber

It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.

Kenneth E. Boulding

MH370 is a Boeing 777 aircraft. It was built and equipped by Boeing. All the communications and GPS equipment must have been installed by Boeing. If they failed or have been disabled, Boeing must know how it can be done.

Mahathir Mohamad

A Quote by John Maynard Smith

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors