Theory-free science makes about as much sense as value-free politics.

The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.

Our searches for numerical order lead as often to terminal nuttiness as to profound insight.

I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know.

History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

The myriad valleys could have arisen anywhere on the landscape. The current positions are quite accidental. If we could repeat the experiment, we might obtain no valleys at all, or a completely different system. Yet we now stand at the shore line contemplating the fine spacing of valleys and their even contact with the sea. How easy it is to be misled and to assume that no other landscape could possibly have arisen.