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Evolution is not just "chance caught on the wing". It is not just a tinkering of the ad hoc, of bricolage, of contraption. It is emergent order honored and honed by selection.

— Stuart Kauffman The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution (1993)

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More quotes by Stuart Kauffman

Living systems exist in the solid regime near the edge of chaos, and natural selection achieves and sustains such a poised state.

The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution (1993)

It would be a triumph to find universal laws of organization for life, ecosystems, and biospheres. The candidate criticality law is emergent and not reducible to physics alone.

Stuart A. Kauffman (2010)

The onset of evolutionism brought with it the concept of branching phylogenies. The branching image, so clear and succinct, has come to underlie all our thinking about organisms and evolution.

The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution (1993)

The famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli is said to have remarked that the deepest pleasure in science comes from finding an instantiation, a home, for some deeply felt, deeply held image.

The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution (1993)

It is not necessary that a specific set of 2000 enzymes be assembled... Whenever a collection of chemicals contains enough different kinds of molecules, a metabolism will crystallize from the broth.

At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1996)

All Stuart Kauffman quotes →

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To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Stuart Kauffman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.