Ernst Mayr - Evolutionary Quotes

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It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon.

Ernst Mayr
Having reached the rare age of 100 years, I find myself in a unique position: I'm the last survivor of the golden age of the Evolutionary Synthesis. That status encourages me to present a personal account of what I experienced in the years (1920s to the 1950s) that were so crucial in the history of evolutionary biology.

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
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
It is quite true, as several recent authors have indicated, that Darwin's book was misnamed, because it is a book on evolutionary changes in general and the factors that control them (selectivity, and so forth), but not a treatise on the origin of species.

Ernst Mayr
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