Ernst Mayr

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

— Ernst Mayr

“The funny thing is if in England, you ask a man in the street who the greatest living Darwinian is, he will…

— Ernst Mayr

The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a…

— Ernst Mayr

most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.

— Ernst Mayr

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

— Ernst Mayr

Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as…

— Ernst Mayr

In Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this…

— Ernst Mayr

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

— Ernst Mayr

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

— Ernst Mayr

A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation…

— Ernst Mayr

According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one…

— Ernst Mayr

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

— Ernst Mayr

Wherever we look at the living biota … discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent…The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record. New…

— Ernst Mayr

There are a number of attributes of species and populations that are not of any particular selective advantage to any single individual…

— Ernst Mayr

The reduced variability of small populations is not always due to accidental gene loss, but sometimes to the fact that the entire…

— Ernst Mayr

Indeed, I was unable to find any evidence whatsoever of the occurrence of a drastic evolutionary acceleration and genetic reconstruction in widespread,…

— Ernst Mayr

“{ On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon } He was not an…

— Ernst Mayr

To take an unequivocal stand, it seems to me, is of greater heuristic value and far more likely to stimulate constructive criticism…

— Ernst Mayr

New gene pools are generated in every generation, and evolution takes place because the successful individuals produced by these gene pools give…

— Ernst Mayr

Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.

— Ernst Mayr

A species consists of a group of populations which replace each other geographically or ecologically and of which the neighboring ones integrate…

— 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…

— 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

Biology can be divided into the study of proximate causes, the study of the physiological sciences (broadly conceived), and into the study…

— Ernst Mayr

It is curious how often erroneous theories have had a beneficial effect for particular branches of science.

— Ernst Mayr