“The funny thing is if in England, you ask a man in the street who the greatest living Darwinian is, he will say Richard… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
In Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation characters which… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
Wherever we look at the living biota … discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent…The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record. New species usually… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
There are a number of attributes of species and populations that are not of any particular selective advantage to any single individual in a… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
The reduced variability of small populations is not always due to accidental gene loss, but sometimes to the fact that the entire population was… — Ernst Mayr Copy Share
