J. B. S. Haldane (Biologist)

Similar remarks that seem derived from this have in recent years been attributed to Arthur Stanley Eddington, as well as to Haldane, but without citations of an original source:

— J. B. S. Haldane art

Unsourced variants: The Creator, if He exists, has an inordinate fondness for beetles. If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation, it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles. The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles, and so we might be more likely to meet them than any other type of animal on a planet that would support life.

— J. B. S. Haldane life

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deiciders.

— J. B. S. Haldane fear

Science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe. So far from being an isolated phenomenon the late war is only an example of the disruptive result that we may constantly expect from the progress of science. The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new. Whether in the end man will survive his ascensions of power we cannot tell. But the problem is no new one. It is the old paradox of freedom re-enacted with mankind for actor and the earth for stage.

— J. B. S. Haldane science

We must carefully distinguish between two quite different doctrines which Darwin popularised, the doctrine of evolution, and that of natural selection. It is quite possible to hold the first and not the second. Similarly with regard to the doctrines of Darwins great contemporary Marx, it is possible to adopt socialism but not historical materialism.Introduction

— J. B. S. Haldane evolution

I do not propose to argue the case for evolution, which I regard as being quite as well proven as most other historical facts, but to discuss its possible causes, which are certainly debatable.Introduction

— J. B. S. Haldane evolution

Darwin believed that the crossing of two types generally led to a blend, and that consequently bisexual reproduction tended to make a species uniform. He therefore had to postulate some cause constantly at work to keep up the inheritable variation within a species. He very naturally looked to the effects of differences of environment. It was shown that Darwin had been wrong in supposing that variations due to environment were inheritable. Selection merely picked out the best available line from a given population, and would not, as Darwin had believed, give rise to an unlimited amount of change.Introduction

— J. B. S. Haldane change

While the geneticists were disproving many of Darwins ideas, the palaeontologists were determining the actual historical facts of evolution. they were able to verify the law of succession, first explicitly given by Darwins colleague Wallace. Every species has come into existence coincident, both in time and space, with a pre-existing closely allied species.Introduction

— J. B. S. Haldane success

Evolution in cases has clearly been a very slow and almost if not quite continuous process, exactly as Darwin had predicted. We must remember, however, that the organisms studied in this way are far from representative. They are in general the most successful members of animal associations living in very constant marine or lacustrine environments. We have not got similar data for land species Nor do we possess them for the rarer forms. We shall see that perhaps dominant species in a uniform environment are the least likely to undergo sudden change to a new type.Introduction

— J. B. S. Haldane success

Comparative parasitology supports the evolutionary hypothesis. If two animals have a common ancestor, their parasites are likely to be descended from those of the ancestor. This principle has been applied with considerable effect to the classification of frogs and other groups.Introduction

— J. B. S. Haldane evolution

The change from one stable equilibrium to the other may take place as the result of the isolation of a small unrepresentative group of the population, a temporary change in the environment which alters the relative viability of different types, or in several other waysCh. IV Natural Selection

— J. B. S. Haldane change

Evolution must have involved the simultaneous change in many genes, which doubtless accounts for its slowness. Here matters would have been easier if heritable variations really formed a continuum, as Darwin apparently thought, i.e. if there were no limit to the possible smallness of a variation. But this is clearly not the case when we are considering meristic characters. the atomic nature of Mendelian inheritance suggests very strongly that even where variation is apparently continuous this appearance is deceptive.Ch. IV Natural Selection

— J. B. S. Haldane change

If the only available genes produce rather large changes, disadvantageous one at a time, then it seems to me probable that evolution will not occur in a random mating population. In a self-fertilised or highly inbred species it may do so if several mutations useful in conjunction, but separately harmful, occur simultaneously. Such an event is rare, but must happen reasonably often in wheatCh. IV Natural Selection

— J. B. S. Haldane time

Where natural selection slackens, new forms may arise which would not survive under more rigid competition, and many ultimately hardy combinations will thus have a chance of arising. Thus the distinction between the principal mammalian orders seems to have arisen during an orgy of variation in the early Eocene which followed the doom of the great reptiles Since that date mammalian evolution has been a slower affair, largely a progressive improvement of the types originally laid down in the Eocene. Another possible mode of making rapid evolutionary jumps is by hybridisation. hybridisation where the hybrids are fertile usually causes an epidemic of variation in the second generation which may include new and valuable types which could not have arisen within a species by slower evolution.Ch. IV Natural Selection

— J. B. S. Haldane men

If human evolution is to continue along the same lines as in the past, it will probably involve a still greater prolongation of childhood and retardation of maturity. Some of the characters distinguishing adult man will be lost. It was not an embryologist or palaeontologist who said, Except ye . . . become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.Ch. V What is Fitness?

— J. B. S. Haldane children

Wrights theory certainly supports the view taken in this book that the evolution in large random-mating populations, which is recorded by palaeontology, is not representative of evolution in general, and perhaps gives a false impression of the events occurring in less numerous species. It is a striking fact that none of the extinct species, which, from the abundance of their fossil remains, are well known to us, appear to have been in our own ancestral line. Our ancestors were mostly rather rare creatures.Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth.Appendix

— J. B. S. Haldane art

Unaided common sense may indicate an equilibrium, but rarely, if ever, tells us whether it is stable. If much of the investigation here summarised has only proved the obvious, the obvious is worth proving when this can be done. And if the relative importance of selection and mutation is obvious, it has certainly not always been recognised as such.Appendix

— J. B. S. Haldane cat

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

— J. B. S. Haldane world

A similar quote is also often attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer but this is likely incorrect since it does not appear in any of his published writings.

— J. B. S. Haldane hope

Share your thoughts on J. B. S. Haldane quotes with the community: