Ernst Mayr Quotes

44 Sourced Quotes

Two forms or species are sympatric, if they occur together, that is if their areas of distribution overlap or coincide. Two forms (or species) are allopatric, if they do not occur together, that is if they exclude each other geographically. The term allopatric is primarily useful in denoting geographic representatives.

Ernst Mayr
Biological classifications have two major objectives: to serve as a basis of biological generalizations in all sort of comparative studies and to serve as a key to an information storage system... Is the classification that is soundest as a basis of generalizations also most convenient for information retrieval? This, indeed, seems to have been true in most cases I have encountered.

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 record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others... I noted that you are never going to find evidence of a small local populatlon that changed very rapidly in the fossil record... Gould was my course assistant at Harvard where I presented this theory again and again for three years. So he knew it thoroughly. So did Eldredge. In fact, in his 1971 paper Eldredge credited me with it. But that was lost over time.

Ernst Mayr
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.

Ernst Mayr
Definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows.

Ernst Mayr
A species is a reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature.

Ernst Mayr
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
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
In high school I read Haeckel's Weltratsel naively and avidly, not as a guide to evolutionary studies but to have ammunition in arguments about the Bible and religion!

Ernst Mayr
I am taking a new look at the Darwinian revolution of 1859, perhaps the most fundamental of all intellectual revolutions in the history of mankind. It not only eliminated man's anthropocentrism, but affected every metaphysical and ethical concept, if consistently applied.

Ernst Mayr
Research not only brings us abundant joy but it also gives us a deep sense of humility.

Ernst Mayr
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
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
Any scientific revolution has to accept all sorts of black boxes, for if one had to wait until all black boxes are opened, one would never have any conceptual advances.

Ernst Mayr