Quotations on Natural selection


 * ... Natural Selection as some sort of universal mechanism is no more plausible then a single differential equation explaining all of physics -,   ...the concept of natural selection is hopelessly confused....  , ..If it can be shown that Natural Selection is vacuous concept,then nothing at all remains of evolutionary theory... - David Berlinski
 *  ... if pigs had wheels mounted on ball bearings instead of trotters, on what scale of porcine Fitness1 would they be? ..... David Berlinski. He was asking(Black Mischief, first edition) that the concept of fitness be derived from first principles and not used as a semantic marshmallow. If the ancestors of pigs tried out wheels instead of trotters, what numerical fitness value would it be assigned on a scale 1 to 10 ?


 * The phrase Natural Selection is a synonym for bad luck, misfortune, and getting the pointy end of the stick. It is empirically, that is, scientifically, meaningless, but it makes a pretty metaphor . It originated in a categorical error parading as an analogy. For the past 150 years, it has deluded unthinking simpletons into mistaking it for a real phenomenon, when it is nothing but a collective anthropomorphization of non-specified natural causes of mortality presented as a mystical, animist 'presence' possessing the intelligence and powers of descrimination necessary to make actual choices, i.e., 'selections'. As such it may be accurately summed up as a childish religious mystique, that is, as a superstition for the Godless -mturner' on the www.arn.org discussion board 


 * Again, we find the same forms, or forms which (save for external ornament) are mathematically identical, repeating themselves in all periods of the world's geological history ; and, irrespective of climate or local conditions, we see them mixed up, one with another, in the depths and on the shores of every sea. It is hard indeed (to my mind) to see where Natural Selection necessarily enters in, or to admit that it has had any share whatsoever in the production of these varied conformations. Unless indeed we use the term Natural Selection in a sense so wide as to deprive it of any purely biological significance; and so recognize as a sort of Natural Selection whatsoever nexus of causes suffices to differentiate between the likely and the unlikely, the scarce and the frequent, the easy and the hard : and leads accordingly, under the peculiar conditions, limitations and restraints which we call "ordinary circumstances," one type of crystal, one form of cloud, one chemical compound, to be of frequent occurrence and another to be rare. - D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson