Every Living Thing Quotes

“This was quite the leap, since at the time insects were believed to spontaneously generate.”
― Jason Roberts, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life

“Life...is not a simple thread which is only extended in length, it is a large web or rather a network, from interval to interval, casts branches to the side in order to unite with networks of other order.”
― Jason Roberts, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life

“The burgeoning fossil record also posed another question: When, exactly, does one taxonomic category end and another begin? This problem came to be known as “the boundary paradox,” and it underscored a fundamental incompatibility between evolution and conventional taxonomy. The nested boxes of Linnaeus seem logical when viewed through the lens of fixity, but from the perspective of deep time and continual change their walls become tenuous. For instance, the genus Homo is believed to have descended from the genus Australopithecus. But this implies that at some point in evolution, there must have been at least one generation that straddled both groups, simultaneously belonging to both Australopithecus and Homo. Unlike other entities of reason, such as the fifty United States, it’s exceedingly difficult to declare clear boundaries. In 1957—just one year before the proposed elevation of Linnaeus to type specimen—Huxley proposed new taxonomy aimed at eliminating such quandaries. Why not scrap the nested boxes entirely and build an organizational structure dictated solely by evolution? Organisms descended from a single ancestor could form groups he dubbed clades. The point where evolution divided such groups he called cladogenesis: the birth of a new clade. The discipline would be called cladistics.”
― Jason Roberts, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life

“Los destellos de epifanía llegarían cuando tuvieran que llegar. Mientras tanto, él se dedicaría a deambular entre sus árboles.”
― Jason Roberts, Todos los seres vivos: La gran carrera por entender la vida en la Tierra

“En la década de 1730, el significado de la palabra «ciencia» no era el mismo que hoy le damos. Derivada de scientia, vocablo latino que significa «conocimiento», se empleaba de forma laxa como un término general para designar cualquier tipo de maestría adquirida.”
― Jason Roberts, Todos los seres vivos: La gran carrera por entender la vida en la Tierra