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One of the most important presuppositions of Darwin's entire thesis is gradualism, the idea that mutations to the genome can cause minor variations in the organism's properties, which can be accumulated piecemeal, bit by bit, over the eons to create the complex order found in the organisms we observe.

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

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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)

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.

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)

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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.