"Natural selection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said of the credit due to other scientists for investigation or discovery in natural selection, the preeminence of Darwin in this field is undisputed. If of any scientific book it can be said that its appearance was "epoch-making" it is true of Darwin's work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... contrast to Lamarckianism, so called,—although it did not originate in the mind of the noted man of science whose name it bears,—is the doctrine of natural selection, first proposed in its full form by Charles Darwin. This doctrine presents a wholly natural description of the method by which organisms evolve, putting all of the emphasis upon the congenital causes of variation, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... has rigid instincts and an a priori mind is probably very imperfectly adapted to the world he comes into: his organs cannot be moulded by experience and use; unless they are fitted by some miraculous pre-established harmony, or by natural selection, to things as they are, they will never be reconciled with them, and an eternal war will ensue between what the animal needs, loves, and can understand and what the outer reality offers. So long as such a creature lives—and his life will be difficult and short—events will continually ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... ecclesiastical authority or tradition and the system of Christian doctrine as such, possess no force. By illustrations from other spheres, let us make clear what is meant by such dynamical elements of Christianity. The doctrine of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was put before the world by Darwin in 1859, and within the half century has been accepted almost as an axiom by the whole civilised world. Undoubtedly that doctrine has proved itself dynamical. On the other hand, a few years earlier than the publication of The ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... preadaptation and form a finality.[38] Their importance cannot be exaggerated. Thanks to his power of preadaptation, the being endowed with intelligence acquires an enormous advantage over everything which does not reason. No doubt, as has been shrewdly remarked, natural selection resembles a finality, for it ends in an adaptation of beings to their surroundings. There is therefore, strictly speaking, such a thing as finality without intelligence. But the adaptation resulting therefrom is a crude one, and proceeds by the elimination ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
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