Mayr Quotes & Sayings

To take an unequivocal stand, it seems to me, is of greater heuristic value and far more likely to stimulate constructive criticism than to evade the issue. — Ernst Mayr

In neither his definition nor the examples illustrating what memes are does Dawkins mention anything that would distinguish memes from concepts. — Ernst Mayr

As a consequence, geneticists described evolution simply as a change in gene frequencies in populations, totally ignoring the fact that evolution consists of the two simultaneous but quite separate phenomena of adaptation and diversification. — Ernst Mayr

Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record. — Ernst Mayr

On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity. — Ernst Mayr

Isolating mechanisms are biological properties of individuals that prevent the interbreeding of populations that are actually or potentially sympatric. — Ernst Mayr

In those early years in New York when I was a stranger in a big city, it was the companionship and later friendship which I was offered in the Linnean Society that was the most important thing in my life. — Ernst Mayr

The funny thing is if in England, you ask a man in the street who the greatest living Darwinian is, he will say Richard Dawkins. And indeed, Dawkins has done a marvelous job of popularizing Darwinism. But Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian. — Ernst W. Mayr

The basics of running this town are very simple. All you need to do is reward those with something to offer, and the way to recognize them is that they can do something you can't; it's that simple. And when you identify them, you protect them with the meanest bastards you can find. — Matt Mayr

I can always recognize the fellow wounded. — Suzette Mayr

Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language. — Ernst Mayr

Ernst Mayr characterized the Cartesian view of animals as dumb automatons.2 — Frans De Waal

No amphibian succeeded in adapting to salt water. — Ernst W. Mayr

Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait. — Ernst W. Mayr

Actually, the entire ascent of life can be presented as an adaptive radiation in the time dimension. From the beginning of replicating molecules to the formation of membrane-bounded cells, the formation of chromosomes, the origin of nucleated eukaryotes, the formation of multicellular organisms, the rise of endothermy, and the evolution of a large and highly complex central nervous system, each of these steps permitted the utilization of a different set of environmental resources, that is, the occupation of a different adaptive zone. — Ernst W. Mayr

Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century. — Ernst W. Mayr

Evolution as such is no longer a theory for a modern author. It is as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun. — Ernst Mayr

The first essential characteristics of nonviolent action is that it is creative. — Hildegard Goss-Mayr

I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God. — Ernst Mayr

Come out of that closet, baby, the air's so bright and disco out here. — Suzette Mayr

There is more to biology than rats, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, and E. coli. — Ernst Mayr

I published that theory [of speciational evolution] in a 1954 paper ... and I clearly related it to paleontology. Darwin argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others ... I noted that you are never going to find evidence of a small local population that changed very rapidly in the fossil record ... Gould was my course assistant at Harvard where I presented this theory again and again for three years. So he knew it thoroughly. So did Eldredge. In fact, in his 1971 paper Eldredge credited me with it. But that was lost over time. — Ernst W. Mayr

Two forms or species are sympatric, if they occur together, that is if their areas of distribution overlap or coincide. Two forms (or species) are allapatric, if they do not occur together, that is if they exclude each other geographically. The term allopatric is primarily useful in denoting geographic representatives. — Ernst Mayr

Most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic. — Ernst Mayr

On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God. He would work as a scientist all week and then on Sunday get down on his knees and pray to God. Frankly I've never been able to understand it because you would need two totally different compartments in your brain, one that deals with religion and the other with everything else. — Ernst Mayr

Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts. — Ernst Mayr

New gene pools are generated in every generation, and evolution takes place because the successful individuals produced by these gene pools give rise to the next generation. — Ernst Mayr

Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation. — Ernst W. Mayr

Living in an entirely different physical as well as biotic environment, such a population would have unique opportunities to enter new niches and to select novel adaptive pathways. — Ernst Mayr

Indeed, I was unable to find any evidence whatsoever of the occurrence of a drastic evolutionary acceleration and genetic reconstruction in widespread, populous species. — Ernst Mayr

The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations. — Ernst Mayr

This new consensus seemed so compelling that Ernst Mayr, the dean of modern Darwinians, opened the ashcan of history for a deposit of Geoffrey's ideas about anatomical unity. — Stephen Jay Gould

Over the past sixty years a rather impressive assembly of respectable taxonomists and evolutionary biologists have tried to unseat the biological species concept for a wide variety of reasons. Most of them failed, probably because Ernst Mayr is alive, adroit, and articulate at ninety-six years young as I write these words, and most critics are no match for him. — Stephen J. O'Brien

I feel that one species, mankind, doesn't have the right to exterminate — Ernst Mayr

Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential. — Ernst Mayr

Definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows. — Ernst Mayr

I had found again and again that the most aberrant population of a species - often having reached species rank, and occasionally classified even as a separate genus - occurred at a peripheral location, indeed usually at the most isolated peripheral location. — Ernst Mayr

It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon. — Ernst Mayr

Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts — Ernst Mayr

There are a number of attributes of species and populations that are not of any particular selective advantage to any single individual in a population but that are of great advantage to the population as a whole. — Ernst Mayr

All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population. — Ernst Mayr

According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another. — Ernst W. Mayr

Life is simply the reification of the process of living. — Ernst Mayr

The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions. — Ernst Mayr

I did not claim that speciation occurs only in founder populations. — Ernst Mayr

Anyone who writes about Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently. — Ernst Mayr

The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability. — Ernst Mayr