An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

by Stephen Jay Gould

Meaningful adaptation must be defined as actively evolved design for local circumstances, not mere muddling through with inherited features poorly suited to current needs.

In Darwin’s world, the calculus of success is simple—winners pass more copies of their own genes into future generations, nothing else. The theory has no space for such concepts as “the good of the species” or “the harmony of ecosystems,” except as epiphenomena of the primal struggle for personal reward.