Fred Hoyle: Quotes about a chance

Fred Hoyle was British astronomer. Explore interesting quotes on chance.
Fred Hoyle: 38   quotes 1   like

“Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.”

Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)

Life , Universe , Chance , Parting

“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

Fred Hoyle

Hoyle on evolution, Nature, Vol. 294, No. 5837 (November 12, 1981), p. 105

Life , Way , Chance

“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

Universe , Chance , Flying

“The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.”

Fred Hoyle

The Big Bang in Astronomy, New Scientist, Vol. 92, No. 1280 (November 19, 1981), p. 527

Chance