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This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.

John Maynard Smith

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John Maynard Smith
Age: 84 †
Born: 1920
Born: February 6
Died: 2004
Died: April 19
Biologist
Economist
Geneticist
Mathematician
Theoretical Biologist
University Teacher
Writer
Zoologist
London
England
John Maynard-Smith
J. Maynard Smith
J. Maynard-Smith
J Maynard Smith
J Maynard-Smith
Maynard Smith
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Maynard Smith J
Maynard-Smith J
Maynard Smith J.
Maynard-Smith J.
Smith JM
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More quotes by John Maynard Smith

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It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.
John Maynard Smith
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I can't go around believing in a God that believes suffering is good for me.
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It is in the nature of science that once a position becomes orthodox it should be suggested to criticism.... It does not follow that, because a position is orthodox, it is wrong.
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So far, we have been able to study only one evolving system and we cannot wait for interstellar flight to provide us with a second. If we want to discover generalizations about evolving systems, we will have to look at artificial ones.
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Scientific theories tell us what is possible myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.
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Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed
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Mathematics is so much easier than words mathematics makes things clear that words merely muddle and confuse and mess up.
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The evolution of sex is the hardest problem in evolutionary biology.
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Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.
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Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population.
John Maynard Smith