An experimental science is supposed to perform experiments that find generalities. It's not just supposed to tally up a long list of individual cases and their unique life histories. That's butterfly collecting.
Richard LewontinThe vulgarization of Darwinism that sees the "struggle for existence" as nothing but the competition for some environmental resource in short supply ignores the large body of evidence about the actual complexity of the relationship between organisms and their resources.
Richard LewontinWe do have tendency, now in biology especially to make up stories, to make theoretical biology a kind of game, in fact we have game theory in biology which is meant to use the theory of games to make predictions or explain things.
Richard LewontinEvolutionists ... have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
Richard LewontinIf you can't write well then your ambition to become famous in this way will be frustrated. Either that or you have to get an amanuensis who will write for you.
Richard LewontinAs an American I must say I haven't been very encouraged by the way in which the people who run the government in the United States have been listening to those contrary voices. And so long as the power to run the world lies in the hands of people who are quite happy to see it get warmer, or fuel be used more, then would those people who oppose it are crying in the wilderness - that's the real problem.
Richard Lewontin