Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
On the objection (still often made by creationists) that the theory of evolution predicts evolution occurs "only by chance", Ch. 2, p. 37.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)
Source: Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (2016), Ch. 3, Fantasy, p. 311
Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
On the objection (still often made by creationists) that the theory of evolution predicts evolution occurs "only by chance", Ch. 2, p. 37.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)
Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) American photographer
ICP Library of Photographers. Roman Vishniac. Grossman Publishers, New York. 1974. pg 42.
Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic
The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
Introduction
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
Context: Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.
Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity
General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)
Context: That miracles are things in themselves possible, must be allowed so long as it is evident that there is in nature a power equal to the working of them. And certainly the power, principle, or being, by whatever name it be denominated, which produced the universe, and established the laws of it, is fully equal to any occasional departures from them. The object and use of those miracles on which the christian religion is founded, is also maintained to be consonant to the object and use of the general system of nature, viz. the production of happiness. We have nothing, therefore to do, but to examine, by the known rules of estimating the value of testimony whether there be reason to think that such miracles have been wrought, or whether the evidence of Christianity, or of the christian history, does not stand upon as good ground as that of any other history whatever.
J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 19–20
Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American writer
Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 83.