Thus, horses have very stiff backbones, and a consequence of this is that people can ride them. However, we would not say that the function of a horse's backbone is to enable people to ride horses, because we do not think that horse's backbones evolved as they did so as to enable people, in the future, to ride.


In: G.A. Dover and R.B. Flavell (eds.), Genome Evolution, Special Volume, No. 20

John Maynard Smith Quotes

Thus, horses have very stiff backbones, and a consequence of this is that people can ride them. However, we would not say that the function of a...

Thus, horses have very stiff backbones, and a consequence of this is that people can ride them. However, we would not say that the function of a...

Thus, horses have very stiff backbones, and a consequence of this is that people can ride them. However, we would not say that the function of a...

Thus, horses have very stiff backbones, and a consequence of this is that people can ride them. However, we would not say that the function of a...