This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.

It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.

Societies depend on agreed rules.

Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.

Language changes very fast.

The evolution of sex is the hardest problem in evolutionary biology.

Information imposes certain criteria on how it can be stored.