9 quotes
In fact writing a computer program is a pretty good way to summarize knowledge about any set of rules.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
The plaint that there hasn’t been enough time for the eye to evolve turns out to be not just wrong but dramatically, decisively, ignominiously wrong.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
Mutation may be random, but selection definitely is not.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
Darwin, however, saw his doubts as a challenge to go on thinking, not a welcome excuse to give up.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
It is easy to think of DNA as the information by which a body makes another body like itself. It would be more correct to see a body as the vehicle used by DNA to make more DNA like itself.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
On one point, though, I insist. This is that wherever in nature there is a sufficiently powerful illusion of good design for some purpose, natural selection is the only known mechanism that can account for it.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
The attitude that living things are placed here for our benefit still dominates our culture, even where its underpinnings have disappeared. We now need, for purposes of scientific understanding, to find a less human-centered view of the natural world.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
Natural selection is an extremely simple process, in the sense that very little machinery needs to be set up in order for it to work. Of course the effects and consequences of natural selection are complex in the extreme. But in order to set natural selection going on a real planet, all that is required is the existence of inherited information.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
Orb webs in real life do their business largely in two dimensions. If the mesh is too coarse, flies pass straight through. If the mesh is too fine, rival spiders will achieve nearly the same result at less cost in silk, and will therefore leave behind more progeny to carry on their economically more prudent genes. Natural selection finds the efficient compromise.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)