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

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
Better
Scientific
Logic
Understood
Problems
Study
Society
History
Problem
Studying

More quotes by 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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Definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows.
Ernst Mayr
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Evolution ... is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.
Ernst Mayr
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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.
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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Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.
Ernst Mayr
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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.
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
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The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations.
Ernst Mayr
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I feel that one species, mankind, doesn't have the right to exterminate
Ernst Mayr
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New gene pools are generated in every generation, and evolution takes place because the successful individuals produced by these gene pools give rise to the next generation.
Ernst Mayr
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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.
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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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.
Ernst Mayr
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Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.
Ernst Mayr
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There is more to biology than rats, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, and E. coli.
Ernst Mayr
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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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Life is simply the reification of the process of living.
Ernst Mayr
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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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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