“The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might — hope against hope — have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other area of human knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even "revolutionary" shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be "refuted" by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus.”

—  Daniel Dennett, book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispu…" by Daniel Dennett?
Daniel Dennett photo
Daniel Dennett86
American philosopher 1942

Related quotes

John Maynard Smith photo

“Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.”

John Maynard Smith book The Theory of Evolution

Source: The Theory of Evolution (1958), p. xv.

Ilya Prigogine photo

“It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann’s work on kinetic theory, Planck’s discovery of quantum theory or Einstein’s theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics”

Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) physical chemist

Source: Time, Structure and Fluctuations (1977), p. 1; Introduction.

Aron Ra photo

“A theory, is a body of knowledge, that is supportive of, and explanative of facts. Scientific laws are included within a theory, facts are included within a theory, that's why you have the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity. There is no concept in creationism, which meets any of the qualifications of a scientific theory, none. You have no facts, you have no laws, you have no evidence, you have no explanative power. All you have, is whatever science can't explain, you pretend you can.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Reason Rally Ra Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isrST6wOUJA (March 28, 2012)

“At the core of punctuated equilibria lies an empirical observation: once evolved, species tend to remain remarkably stable, recognizable entities for millions of years. The observation is by no means new, nearly every paleontologist who reviewed Darwin's Origin of Species pointed to his evasion of this salient feature of the fossil record. But stasis was conveniently dropped as a feature of life's history to he reckoned with in evolutionary biology. And stasis had continued to be ignored until Gould and I showed that such stability is a real aspect of life's history which must be confronted-and that, in fact, it posed no fundamental threat to the basic notion of evolution itself. For that was Darwin's problem: to establish the plausibility of the very idea of evolution, Darwin felt that he had to undermine the older (and ultimately biblically based) doctrine of species fixity. Stasis, to Darwin, was an ugly inconvenience.”

Niles Eldredge (1943) American biologist

Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, pp.188-189

Mike Huckabee photo

“I'm not familiar that they're dodging it. Maybe they are. But I think schools also ought to be fair to all views. Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that's why it's called the theory of evolution.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Arkansans Ask
Television
July 2004, quoted in * Jason
Wiles
Is Evolution Arkansas's Hidden Curriculum?
2005-01-01
Reports of the National Center for Science Education
25
1-2
32-36
http://ncse.com/rncse/25/1-2/is-evolution-arkansass-hidden-curriculum
2011-03-01

“Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. […] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Shields of Expectation—and Actuality", p. 425
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Carl Sagan photo

“The entire recent history of biology shows that we are, to a remarkable degree, the results of the interactions of an extremely complex array of molecules; and the aspect of biology that was once considered its holy of holies, the nature of the genetic material, has now been fundamentally understood in terms of the chemistry of its constituent nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, and their operational agents, the proteins.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Introduction (p. 7)
The Dragons of Eden (1977)

George Will photo

“Geology has joined biology in lowering mankind's self-esteem. Geology suggests how mankind's existence is contingent upon the geological consent of the planet.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

from a review of Simon Winchester’s Krakatoa (2003), as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (rev. 2005), ed. Rawson & Miner, Oxford University Press, p. 600: ISBN 0195168232
2000s

Hans Freudenthal photo

“Science should be distinguished from technique and its scientific instrumentation, technology. Science is practised by scientists, and techniques by ‘engineers’ — a term that in our terminology includes physicians, lawyers, and teachers. If for the scientist knowledge and cognition are primary, it is action and construction that characterises the work of the engineer, though in fact his activity may be based on science. In history, technique often preceded science.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Hans Freudenthal (1978). Weeding and Sowing. Preface to a Science of Mathematical Education; As cited in: Ben Wilbrink (2013) " Hans Freudenthal Aantekeningen bij zijn publicaties http://www.benwilbrink.nl/literature/freudenthal.htm".

Related topics