William Bateson Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

The concept of evolution as proceeding through the gradual transformation of masses of individuals by the accumulation of impalpable changes is one that the study of genetics shows immediately to be false. Once for all, that burden so gratuitously undertaken in ignorance of generic physiology by the evolutionists of the last century may be cast into oblivion. For the facts of heredity and variation unite to prove that genetic variation is a phenomenon of individuals.

William Bateson
Memory is a mystery as deep as any that even psychology can propound. [Natural] Philosophers might perhaps encourage themselves to attack the problem of the nature of memory by reflecting that after all the process may in some of its aspects be comparable with that of inheritance, but the student of genetics, as long as he can keep in close touch with a profitable basis of material fact, will scarcely be tempted to look for inspiration in psychical analogies.

William Bateson
Evolution is a process of Variation and Heredity. The older writers, though they had some vague idea that it must be so, did not study Variation and Heredity. Darwin did, and so begot not a theory, but a science.

William Bateson
If species had really arisen by the natural selection for impalpable differences, intermediate forms should abound, and the limits between species should be on the whole indefinite. As this conclusion follows necessarily from the premisses, the selectionists believe and declare that it represents the facts of nature. Difference between species being by axiom indefinite, the differences between varieties must be supposed to be still less definite. Consequently the conclusion that evolution must proceed by insensible transformation of masses of individuals has become an established dogma.

William Bateson
Misconception was especially brought in by describing descent in terms of "blood". The common speech uses expressions such as consanguinity, pure-blooded, half-blood, and the like, which call up a misleading picture to the mind. Blood is in some respects a fluid, and thus it is supposed that this fluid can be both quantitatively and qualitatively diluted with other bloods, just as treacle can be diluted with water.

William Bateson
I would trust Shakespeare, but I would not trust a committee of Shakespeares.

William Bateson
Treasure your exceptions!...Keep them always uncovered and in sight. Exceptions are like the rough brickwork of a growing building which tells that there is more to come and shows where the next construction is to be.

William Bateson
Truer notions of genetic physiology are given by the Hebrew expression "seed". If we speak of a man as "of the blood-royal" we think at once of plebeian dilution, and we wonder how much of the royal fluid is likely to be "in his veins"; but if we say he is "of the seed of Abraham" we feel something of the permanence and indestructibility of that germ which can be divided and scattered among all nations, but remains recognisable in type and characteristics after 4000 years.

William Bateson
Modem research lends not the smallest encouragement or sanction to the view that gradual evolution occurs by the transformation of masses of individuals, though that fancy has fixed itself on popular imagination.

William Bateson
Few who are familiar with the facts that genetic research has revealed are now inclined to speculate as to the manner by which the process [species come into existence] has been accomplished. Our knowledge of the nature and properties of living things is far too meagre to justify any such attempts. Suggestions of course can be made: though, however, these ideas may have a stimulating value in the lecture room, they look weak and thin when set out in print.

William Bateson
Though the problem [of evolution] is all unsolved and the old questions stand unanswered, there are those who have taken on themselves the responsibility of giving to the ignorant, as a gospel, in the name of Science, the rough guesses of yesterday that tomorrow should forget.

William Bateson
Variation, whatever may be its cause, and however it may be limited, is the essential phenomenon of Evolution. Variation, in fact, is Evolution. The readiest way, then, of solving the problem of Evolution is to study the facts of Variation.

William Bateson
I well remember receiving from one of the most earnest of my seniors the friendly warning that it was waste of time to study variation, for "Darwin had swept the field." Parenthetically we may notice that though scientific opinion in general became rapidly converted to the doctrine of pure selection, there was one remarkable exception. Systematists for the most part kept aloof. Everyone was convinced that natural selection operating in a continuously varying population was a sufficient account of the origin of species except the one class of scientific workers whose labours familiarised them with the phenomenon of specific difference. From that time the systematists became, as they still in great measure remain, a class apart.

William Bateson
It was in the attempt to ascertain the interrelationships between species that experiments n genetics were first made. The words "evolution" and "origin of species" are now so intimately associated with the name of Darwin that we are apt to forget that the idea of a common descent had been prominent in the minds of naturalists before he wrote, and that, for more than half a century, zealous investigators had been devoting themselves to the experimental study of that possibility. Prominent among this group of experimenters may be mentioned Koelreauter, John Hunter, Herbert Knight, Gartner, Jordan. Naudin, Godron, Lecoq, Wichura — men whose names are familiar to every reader of "Animals and Plants under Domestication."

William Bateson
This A is the hybrid, or 'mule' form, or as I have elsewhere called it, the, as distinguished from or the.

William Bateson
That the variations are controlled by physiological law, we have now experimental proof; but that this control is guided ever so little in response to the needs of adaptation there is not the smallest sign.

William Bateson
An exact determination of the laws of heredity will probably work more change in a man's outlook on the world and in his power over nature that any other advance in natural knowledge that can be clearly foreseen.

William Bateson
In the light of the new knowledge various plausible, but frequently unsatisfying, suggestions put forward, especially by Wallace, Weismann, and their followers, as probable accounts of evolutionary progress, must be finally abandoned.

William Bateson
When I look at a dividing cell I feel as an astronomer might do if he beheld the formation of a double star: that an original act of creation is taking place before me.

William Bateson
Though we must hold to our faith in the evolution of species, there is little evidence as to how it has come about, and no clear proof that the process is continuing in any considerable degree at the present time.

William Bateson
Natural Selection is stern, but she has her tolerant moods.

William Bateson