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

Ernst Mayr

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Ernst Mayr
Age: 100 †
Born: 1904
Born: July 5
Died: 2005
Died: February 3
Biologist
Curator
Ornithologist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Zoologist
Kempten/Allgäu
Ernst Walter Mayr
E. Mayr
E. W. Mayr
Effects
Erroneous
Theory
Beneficial
Particular
Theories
Often
Branches
Science
Curiosity
Curious
Accounts
Effect

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A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation characters which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation when the external barriers break down.
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I feel that one species, mankind, doesn't have the right to exterminate
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Evolution ... is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.
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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.
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In neither his definition nor the examples illustrating what memes are does Dawkins mention anything that would distinguish memes from concepts.
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Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.
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There is more to biology than rats, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, and E. coli.
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Life is simply the reification of the process of living.
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most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.
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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.
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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.
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Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.
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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.
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A species is a reproductive community of populations reproductively isolated from others that occupies a specific niche in nature.
Ernst Mayr
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Wherever we look at the living biota … discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent…The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record. New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates.
Ernst Mayr
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It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon.
Ernst Mayr
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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
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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
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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
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I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.
Ernst Mayr