“What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, whereas chance and design both fail at the starting gate? The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so.”

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 153

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Richard Dawkins 322
English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

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“Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Reported by J. S. Huxley in Evolution in Action, London: Chatto and Windus, 1953.
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“Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.”

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