Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways.

For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time.

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.

Is uniformitarianism necessary?