Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth5 July 1904
CountryGermany
entirely fixed longer object start
No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
agree analysis fossil frequency recent revealed species stasis unexpected
I agree with Gould that the frequency of stasis in fossil species revealed by the recent analysis was unexpected by most evolutionary biologists.
authors failed modern production
Most modern authors failed to distinguish between two very different phenomena: the production of a new taxon, and the production of a new phenotype.
evolution hence longer perfection strives toward
Evolution is no longer necessarily progressive; it no longer strives toward perfection or any other goal. It is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.
mistake two population
Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.
sunday hands two
On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God. He would work as a scientist all week and then on Sunday get down on his knees and pray to God. Frankly I've never been able to understand it because you would need two totally different compartments in your brain, one that deals with religion and the other with everything else.
variation new-start generations
Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
society logic study
most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.
long population different
Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record.
discovery understanding society
Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts
population isolation individual
Isolating mechanisms are biological properties of individuals that prevent the interbreeding of populations that are actually or potentially sympatric.
understanding definitions difficult
Definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows.
novelty population doe
The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations.
rats biology
There is more to biology than rats, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, and E. coli.