23 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes & Sayings with Wallpapers & Posters

Q: What is the best The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design quote?

"The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity." - Richard Dawkins

Q: What are some The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design quotes?

"The resemblance of the signs of the zodiac to the animals after which they are named... is as unimpressive as the predictions of astrologers." - Richard Dawkins "Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past." - Richard Dawkins "…the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants." - Richard Dawkins

Q: What are some short The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design quotes?

"The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened" - Richard Dawkins "Sözcükler bizim hizmetkârlarımızdır, efendilerimiz değil." - Richard Dawkins "The physicist’s problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist’s problem is the problem of complexity." - Richard Dawkins

Q: What is good short The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design quote?

"It is raining DNA outside." - Richard Dawkins

The arms race between [predators] and [prey] is asymmetric, in which success on either side is felt as failure by the other side, but the nature of the success and failure on the two sides is very different. The two sides are 'trying' to do very different things. [Predators] are trying to eat [prey]. [Prey] are not trying to eat [predators], they are trying to avoid being eaten by [predators].From an evolutionary point of view asymmetric arms races are more [likely] to generate highly complex weapons systems.

Arms race Quotes Constructive evolution Quotes Evolution Quotes Natural selection Quotes Predation Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

A despeito de todas as aparências, os únicos relojoeiros da natureza são as forças cegas da física, ainda que atuem de um modo muito especial. Um verdadeiro relojoeiro tem antevisão: ele projeta suas molas e engrenagens e planeja suas conexões imaginando o resultado final com um propósito em mente. A seleção natural, o processo cego, inconsciente e automático que Darwin descobriu e que agora sabemos ser a explicação para a existência e para a forma aparentemente premeditada de todos os seres vivos, não tem nenhum propósito em mente

Darwinismo Quotes Seleção natural Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

The long-lived gene as an evolutionary unit is not any particular physical structure but the textual archival information that is copied on down the generations. [I]t is widely distributed in space among different individuals, and widely distributed in time over many generations. [A] successful gene will be one that does well in the environments provided by these other genes that it is likely to meet in lots of different bodies.

Evolution Quotes Genetics Quotes Selfish gene Quotes Selfish gene theory Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

There is a definite set of biomorphs, each permanently sitting in its own unique place in a mathematical space. It is permanently sitting there in the sense that, if only you knew its genetic formula, you could instantly find it; moreover, its neighbours in this special kind of space are the biomorphs that differ from it by only one gene. [W]hen you first evolve a new creature by artificial selection in [a] computer model, it feels like a creative process. So it is, indeed. But what you are really doing is finding the creature, for it is, in a mathematical sense, already sitting in its own place in the genetic space of Biomorph Land.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

[W]e can calculate our way into regions of miraculous improbability far greater than we can imagine as plausible. Let's look at this matter of what we think is plausible. What we can imagine as plausible is a narrow band in the middle of a much broader spectrum of what is actually possible. Sometimes it is narrower than what is actually there. There is a good analogy with light. Our eyes are built to cope with a narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies (the ones we call light), somewhere in the middle of the spectrum from long radio waves at one end to short X-rays at the other. We can't see the rays outside the narrow light band, but we can do calculations about them, and we can build instruments to detect them. In the same way, we know that the scales of size and time extend in both directions far outside the realm of what we can visualize. Our minds can't cope with the large distances that astronomy deals in or with the small distances that atomic physics deals in, but we can represent those distances in mathematical symbols. Our minds can't imagine a time span as short as a picosecond, but we can do calculations about picoseconds, and we can build computers that can complete calculations within picoseconds. Our minds can't imagine a timespan as long as a million years, let alone the thousands of millions of years that geologists routinely compute. Just as our eyes can see only that narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies that natural selection equipped our ancestors to see, so our brains are built to cope with narrow bands of sizes and times. Presumably there was no need for our ancestors to cope with sizes and times outside the narrow range of everyday practicality, so our brains never evolved the capacity to imagine them. It is probably significant that our own body size of a few feet is roughly in the middle of the range of sizes we can imagine. And our own lifetime of a few decades is roughly in the middle of the range of times we can imagine.

Evolution Quotes Evolutionary psychology Quotes Improbability Quotes Miracles Quotes Scope insensitivity Quotes Scope neglect Quotes

[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not 158 The Blind Watchmaker clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer.

Cultural evolution Quotes Evolution Quotes Memes Quotes Memetics Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

It is raining DNA outside.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

[...] se uma teoria da origem da vida for suficientemente "plausível" para satisfazer nosso juízo subjetivo de plausibilidade, ela é plausível "demais" para explicar a pobreza de vida no universo que observamos. Segundo esse argumento, a teoria que estamos procurando tem de ser o tipo de teoria que parece implausível para nossa imaginação limitada, radicada na Terra e circunscrita a poucas décadas.

Origem da vida Quotes Sopa primordial Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

[T]he form that an animal's subjective experience takes will be a property of the internal computer model. That model will be designed, in evolution, for its suitability for useful internal representation, irrespective of the physical stimuli that come to it from outside. Bats and we need the same kind of internal model for representing the position of objects in three-dimensional space. The fact that bats construct their internal model with the aid of echoes, while we construct ours with the aid of light, is irrelevant.

Intelligence Quotes / Cognitive science Quotes Consciousness Quotes Evolutionary psychology Quotes Qualia Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

[O]ur percept is an elaborate computer model in the brain, constructed on the basis of information coming from [the environment], but transformed in the head into a form in which that information can be used. Wavelength differences in the light out there become coded as 'colour' differences in the computer model in the head. Shape and other attributes are encoded in the same kind of way, encoded into a form that is convenient to handle. The sensation of seeing is, for us, very different from the sensation of hearing, but this cannot be directly due to the physical differences between light and sound. Both light and sound are, after all, translated by the respective sense organs into the same kind of nerve impulses. It is impossible to tell, from the physical attributes of a nerve impulse, whether it is conveying information about light, about sound or about smell. The reason the sensation of seeing is so different from the sensation of hearing and the sensation of smelling is that the brain finds it convenient to use different kinds of internal model of the visual world, the world of sound and the world of smell. It is because we internally use our visual information and our sound information in different ways and for different purposes that the sensations of seeing and hearing are so different. It is not directly because of the physical differences between light and sound.

Intelligence Quotes / Cognitive science Quotes Consciousness Quotes Evolutionary psychology Quotes Qualia Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

The physicist’s problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist’s problem is the problem of complexity.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

What we can imagine as plausible is a narrow band in the middle of a much broader spectrum of what is actually possible. [O]ur eyes are built to cope with a narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies. [W]e can't see the rays outside the narrow light band, but we can do calculations about them, and we can build instruments to detect them. In the same way, we know that the scales of size and time extend in both directions far outside the realm of what we can visualize. Our minds can't cope with the large distances that astronomy deals in or with the small distances that atomic physics deals in, but we can represent those distances in mathematical symbols. Our minds can't imagine a time span as short as a picosecond, but we can do calculations about picoseconds, and we can build computers that can complete calculations within picoseconds. Our minds can't imagine a timespan as long as a million years, let alone the thousands of millions of years that geologists routinely compute. Just as our eyes can see only that narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies that natural selection equipped our ancestors to see, so our brains are built to cope with narrow bands of sizes and times. Presumably there was no need for our ancestors to cope with sizes and times outside the narrow range of everyday practicality, so our brains never evolved the capacity to imagine them. It is probably significant that our own body size of a few feet is roughly in the middle of the range of sizes we can imagine. And our own lifetime of a few decades is roughly in the middle of the range of times we can imagine.

Evolution Quotes Evolutionary psychology Quotes Improbability Quotes Miracles Quotes Scope insensitivity Quotes Scope neglect Quotes

[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer.

Cultural evolution Quotes Evolution Quotes Meme Quotes Memetics Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes Universal darwinism Quotes

Os livros de física podem ser complicados, mas eles, assim como os carros e os computadores, são produtos de objetos biológicos - cérebros humanos. Os objetos e os fenômenos que um livro de física descreve são mais simples que uma única célula do corpo de seu autor. E o autor consiste em trilhões de células, muitas delas diferentes umas das outras, organizadas com arquitetura intrincada e engenharia de precisão para formar uma máquina capaz de escrever um livro.

Dawkins Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

O darwinismo é uma teoria de processos cumulativos tão lentos que se desenrolam ao longo de milhares e milhões de anos. Todos os nossos juízos intuitivos sobre o que é provável mostram-se errados por larga margem.

Dawkins Quotes Evolution Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

If a curiously selective plague came along and killed all people of intermediate height, 'tall' and 'short' would come to have just as precise a meaning as 'bird' or 'mammal'. The same is true of human ethics and law. Our legal and moral systems are deeply species-bound. The director of a zoo is legally entitled to 'put down' a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might 'put down' a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees in this way is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [T]he only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.

Abortion Quotes Animal law Quotes Ethics Quotes Nonhuman animal Quotes Nonhuman rights Quotes Species ethics Quotes

Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Darwinism Quotes Evolution Quotes Natural selection Quotes Teleology Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

Sözcükler bizim hizmetkârlarımızdır, efendilerimiz değil.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened

Mathematics Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

…the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.

Atheism Quotes Creation myths Quotes Mythology Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

Destroy Quotes Evolution Quotes Existence Quotes Natural selection Quotes The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

The resemblance of the signs of the zodiac to the animals after which they are named... is as unimpressive as the predictions of astrologers.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes

23 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design Quotes & Sayings with Wallpapers & Posters - Quotes.Pub