“What humans can't engineer, evolution can.”
Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)
“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”
On evolution vs. "intelligent design", interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=18090&title=kurt-vonnegut/ (13 September 2005) <br class="br">Various interviews
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Kurt Vonnegut318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
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Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player
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Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
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David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor
Videodrome commentary track
Context: Technology isn’t really effective, it doesn’t really expose its true meaning, I feel, until it has been incorporated into the human body. And most of it does, in some way or another. Electronics. People wear glasses. They wear hearing aids that are really little computers. They wear pacemakers. They have their intestines modified. It’s really quite incredible what we’ve been able to do to the human body and really take it some place that evolution on its own could not take it. Technology has really taken over evolution. We’ve seized control of evolution ourselves without really quite being conscious of it. It’s no longer the environment that affects change in the human body, it’s our minds, it’s our concepts, our technology that are doing that.
Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames
Charles Eames in a 1952 speech to a national assembly of the AIA; As cited in: Ray Eames http://eamesdesigns.com/library-entry/ray-eames/ at eamesdesigns.com, Accessed April 8, 2014; Charles Eames talks about Ray Eames
“She glanced at him. “What gods do you respect?”
“None.”
“And why not?”
“I help myself,” he said.”
Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 1 (p. 20)