Theodosius Dobzhansky Quotes & Sayings

Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts
some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Seen in retrospect, evolution as a whole doubtless had a general direction, from simple to complex, from dependence on to relative independence of the environment, to greater and greater autonomy of individuals, greater and greater development of sense organs and nervous systems conveying and processing information about the state of the organism's surroundings, and finally greater and greater consciousness. You can call this direction progress or by some other name. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Marxists are more right than wrong when they argue that the problems scientists take up,. the way they go about solving them, and even the solutions they arc inclined to accept, arc conditioned by the intellectual, social, and economic environments in which they live and work. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

The business of proving evolution has reached a stage when it is futile for biologists to work merely to discover more and more evidence of evolution. Those who choose to believe that God created every biological species separately in the state we observe them, but made them in a way calculated to lead us to the conclusion that they are the products of an evolutionary development are obviously not open to argument. All that can be said is that their belief is an implicit blasphemy, for it imputes to God an appalling deviousness. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts ... the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

An accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or one's radio set will seldom make it work better. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Pat answers to complex problems are the hallmark of intellectual mediocrity — Theodosius Dobzhansky

The living world is not a single array ... connected by unbroken series of intergrades. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific reasons to doubt the facticity of evolution, would be propagating a plain untruth. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Natural selection must be replaced by eugenical artificial selection. This idea constitutes the sound core of eugenics, the applied science of human betterment. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

The more we know, the better we realize that our knowledge is a little island in the midst of an ocean of ignorance. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can only be doubted by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Nature's stern discipline enjoins mutual help at least as often as warfare. The fittest may also be the gentlest. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

The foundations of population genetics were laid chiefly by mathematical deduction from basic premises contained in the works of Mendel and Morgan and their followers. Haldane, Wright, and Fisher are the pioneers of population genetics whose main research equipment was paper and ink rather than microscopes, experimental fields, Drosophila bottles, or mouse cages. Theirs is theoretical biology at its best, and it has provided a guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation and observation. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

No known human group ... simply throw out its dead without any ritual or ceremony. In stark contrast, no animal practices burial of dead individuals of its own species. — Theodosius Dobzhansky