Biology can be divided into the study of proximate causes, the study of the physiological sciences (broadly conceived), and into the study of ultimate (evolutionary) causes, the subject of natural history. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
There is more to biology than rats, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, and E. coli. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population. — Ernst Mayr Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts — Ernst Mayr Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
