“Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves.”

— Richard C. Lewontin

The Dialectical Biologist (1985), co-written with Richard Levins, Introduction, p. 3.
Context: Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. These are the properties of things that we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration.

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Richard C. Lewontin 14

American evolutionary biologist 1929

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