The Beak of the Finch Quotes

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree,” he writes. But if we look at the whole tree of life, Darwin says, we can find innumerable gradations from extremely simple eyes consisting of hardly more than a nerveless cluster of pigment cells, which are rudimentary light sensors, to the marvels of the human eye, which are more impressive pieces of work than the human telescope.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“The lucky individual that finds a different seed, or nook, or niche, will fly up and out from beneath the Sisyphean rock of competition. It will tend to flourish and so will its descendants—that is, those that inherit the lucky character that had set it a little apart. Individuals that diverge from the madding crowd will tend to prosper, while the rest will be ground down.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Peter suspects that the caltrop is evolving in response to the finches. Where the struggle for existence is fierce, the caltrop that is likeliest to succeed is the plant that puts more energy into spines and less into seeds; but in the safer, more secluded spot, the fittest plants are the ones that put more energy into making seeds and less energy into protecting them. The finches may be driving the evolution of caltrop while caltrop is driving the evolution of the finches.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Cactus finches do more with cactus than Plains Indians did with buffalo. They nest in cactus; they sleep in cactus; they often copulate in cactus; they drink cactus nectar; they eat cactus flowers, cactus pollen, and cactus seeds. In return they pollinate the cactus, like bees.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Darwin argues, essentially, that all the sophistications we see in the eagle’s or the human’s eye could have arisen gradually, by stages, across geological spans of time, each stage conferring somewhat clearer vision than the one before.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Probably no other major branch of science today is so haunted, dominated, and driven by the thoughts of one man.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Without natural selection all of the fish would have gotten gaudier. Without sexual selection none of them would have gotten gaudier.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Slow but sure moves the might of the gods,” says the chorus in Euripides’ The Bacchae.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Tiny variations are everything.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“And as poor Mr. Micawber used to say, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“the doctrine that all nature is at war is most true. The struggle very often falls on the egg & seed, or on the seedling, larva & young; but fall it must sometime in the life of each individual, or more commonly at intervals on successive generations & then with extreme severity.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“What a trifling difference must often determine which shall survive, and which perish! —CHARLES DARWIN,
letter to Asa Gray”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“This is what we do best. We add to what was learned before, raising the old questions again and again, lifting them if we can toward higher and higher ground, and ourselves with them. Why are there so many kinds of animals, and why are we among them? Probably we have been asking these questions ever since we lived in caves—when it was still the common experience of our kind to stand alone on a cliff’s rim and survey a wilderness of animals, feeling kinship in difference, difference in kinship, our eyes watchful in their large orbits, our arms outspread. The questions were born then, as we stared down, or looked up at the sky, turning to follow the turning flocks, revolving our heads on our featherless shoulders: high above the plains of our first hours, winged only with the questions.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Behavior is the product of forces, contending forces that are still contending today, struggling within each generation. The borders between species are continually tested and redefined by the outcome of each member of each generation's luck in love - an amazing thought. (p.170)”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch

“In fact, I think they should be called Lack's finches and not Darwin's. Darwin didn't see the significance of the birds. He thought there was just one species per island. He didn't even try to pull it together - he didn't do a bloody thing with them except collect them.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch

“Life is always poised for flight. From a distance it looks still, silhouetted against the bright sky or the dark ground; but up close it is flitting this way and that, as if displaying to the world at every moment its perpetual readiness to take off in any of a thousand directions.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“Even drought bears fruit. Even death is a seed.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“animals differ radically among islands that have “the same geological nature,”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it.”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“always”
― Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time