“Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives.”

1980s and later, Knowledge, Evolution and Society (1983), "Coping with Ignorance", "Our Moral Heritage"

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 411-412
Context: The competition of races and species, observes Mr. Darwin, is always most severe between those which are most closely allied and which fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature. Hence, when the conditions of existence are modified, the original stock runs great risk of being superseded by some one of its modified offshoots. The new race or species may not be absolutely superior in the sum of its powers and endowment to the parent stock, and may even be more simple in structure and of a lower grade of intelligence, as well as of organisation, provided, on the whole, it happens to have some slight advantage over its rivals. Progression, therefore, is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection, though, when a higher organisation happens to be coincident with superior fitness to new conditions, the new species will have greater power and a greater chance of permanently maintaining and extending its ground.

Summa Contra Gentiles, III,126,3

Source: Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step (1970), p. 32 as cited in: ACEEE (1994) 1994 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. p. 165.
Context: Vertical thinking is selection by exclusion. One works within a frame of reference and throws out what is not relevant. With lateral thinking one realizes that a pattern cannot be restructured from within itself but only as the result of some outside influence. So one welcomes outside influences for their provocative action. The more irrelevant such influences are the more chance there is of altering the established pattern. To look only for things that are relevant means perpetuating the current pattern.

Part 1 “Four Classical Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Design (and Some Creationist Calculations)” (p. 19)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 44

Darwin's Dangerous Disciple: An Interview by Frank Miele (1995)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 194)