Simon Conway Morris Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

It is my opinion that human history can make no sense unless evil doings are recognized for what they are, and that they are bearable only if somehow they may be redeemed.

Simon Conway Morris
The fact that we arrived here via an immensely long string of species that originated in something like Pikaia rather than some other crepuscular blob is a wonderful scientific story, but it is hardly material to our present condition.

Simon Conway Morris
On a perfect planet, such as might be acceptable to a physicist, one might predict that from its origin the diversity of life would grow exponentially until the carrying capacity, however defined, was reached. The fossil record of the Earth, however, tells a very different story.

Simon Conway Morris
If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.

Simon Conway Morris
... nevertheless, as I never tire of pointing out to my students in Cambridge, chimpanzees do not play the piano, drink dry martinis, or erect temples to glorify the Creator.

Simon Conway Morris
Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and we too are one of its products. This does not mean that evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain convinced that this is the case.

Simon Conway Morris
Perhaps a suitable analogy to explain the short-falls of Dawkins's account of evolution is to think of an oil painting. In this analogy Dawkins has explained the nature and range of pigments; how the extraordinary azure colour was obtained, what effect cobalt has, and so on. But the description is quite unable to account for the picture itself. This view of evolution is incomplete and therefore fails in its side-stepping of how information (the genetic code) gives rise to phenotype, and by what mechanisms. Organisms are more than the sum of their parts, and we may also note in passing that the world depicted by Dawkins has lost all sense of transcendence.

Simon Conway Morris
Second, and far more serious, are particular examples of a sophistry and sleight of hand in the misuse of metaphor, and more importantly a distortion of metaphysics in support of an evolutionary programme.

Simon Conway Morris
Again and again Gould has been seen to charge into battle, sometimes hardly visible in the struggling mass. Strangely immune to seemingly lethal lunges he finally re-emerges. Eventually the dust and confusion die down. Gould announces to the awestruck onlookers that our present understanding of evolutionary processes is dangerously deficient and the theory is perhaps in its death throes. We look beyond the exponent of doom, and there standing in the sunlight is the edifice of evolutionary theory, little changed.

Simon Conway Morris
Convergence is, in my opinion, not only deeply fascinating but, curiously, it is as often overlooked. More importantly, it hints at the existence of a deeper structure to biology. It helps us to delineate a metaphorical map across which evolution must navigate. In this sense the Darwinian mechanisms and the organic substrate we call life are really a search engine to discover particular solutions, including intelligence and—risky thought—perhaps deeper realities?

Simon Conway Morris
Richard Dawkins is arguably England's most pious atheist.

Simon Conway Morris
Gould's arguments on the quirkiness of human intelligence are not only presented as part of an evolutionary argument, but also I believe to buttress an ideological viewpoint. In brief, his assessment of Man as an evolutionary accident is to lead us into a libertarian attitude whereby, by virtue of a cosmic accident, we, and we alone, have no choice but to take responsibility for our own destiny and mould it to our desire.

Simon Conway Morris
The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.

Simon Conway Morris
The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency.

Simon Conway Morris
It seldom seems to strike the ultra-Darwinists that theology might have its own richness and subtleties, and might—strange thought—actually tell us things about the world that are not only to our real advantage, but will never be revealed by science.

Simon Conway Morris
Notwithstanding the quasi-religious enthusiasms of ultra-Darwinists, their own understanding of theology is a combination of ignorance and derision, philosophically limp, drawing on clichés, and happily fuelled by the idiocies of the so-called scientific creationists.

Simon Conway Morris
The underlying ideological agenda of Gould has always been fairly clear. Even where there has been a shift in thinking, it might be argued that in general the discussions were reflecting a particular world-view that at the least was sympathetic to the greatest of twentieth-century pseudo-religions, Marxism.

Simon Conway Morris
If one compares the sequence of amino acids that go to form the protein haemoglobin, it becomes apparent that humans and chimps are identical and do not differ in a single site...

Simon Conway Morris
Third, as has often been noted, the pronouncements of the ultra-Darwinists can shake with a religious fervour. Their texts ring with high-minded rhetoric and dire warnings—not least of the unmitigated evils of religion—all to reveal the path of simplicity and straight thinking.

Simon Conway Morris
The list is almost endless: the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and the Nazi Holocaust are only some among the infamous epochs in the litany of disaster.

Simon Conway Morris
I am driven to observe of the ultra-Darwinists the following features as symptomatic. First, to my eyes, is their almost unbelievable self-assurance, their breezy self-confidence.

Simon Conway Morris