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Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves.

— Richard Lewontin The Dialectical Biologist (1985)

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More quotes by Richard Lewontin

The vulgarization of Darwinism that sees the "struggle for existence" as nothing but the competition for some environmental resource in short supply ignores the large body of evidence about the actual complexity of the relationship between organisms and their resources.

Biology is not physics, because organisms are such complex physical objects, and sociology is not biology because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms. By pretending to a kind of knowledge that it cannot achieve, social science can only engender the scorn of natural scientists and the cynicism of the humanists.

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