Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal … - Stephen Jay Gould

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Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.

Stephen Jay Gould

Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past, purely biological mode of change, and our current, maddening acceleration toward something new and liberating- or toward the abyss.

Abyss, Acceleration, Characteristics, Differences, Past, Technology

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If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

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

Agents, Decency, Evolution, Keys, Organized, Skepticism

Human life is the result of a glorious evolutionary accident.

Accident, Atheism, Human, Life Is, Religion, Result

Nature is what she is - amoral and persistent.

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Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.

Benefit, Development, Environment, Evolution, Happens, Problem