Quote #129

My prize would be for a visually appealing world in which the life-forms have a visible, and preferably 3-D, morphology on the computer screen. They must evolve adaptations not just to 'inanimate' factors like the weather (which would produce essentially predictable, not emergent evolution) but to other evolving life forms (which is a recipe for emergent properties).

More from Richard Dawkins

  1. When I wrote this program, I never thought that it would evolve anything more than a variety of treelike shapes. I had hoped for weeping wi…
  2. What are all of us but self-reproducing robots? ... We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a w…
  3. You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life - all living things - is descended from a single common ancestor which lived …
  4. ... a fairly common pattern in television news: right at the end a smile comes onto the face of the newsreader and this is the scientific j…
  5. There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to hap…
  6. Very often in science one finds that there are ideas in the air, and lots of people hold them, but they don't even realise they hold them. …
  7. I think it is not helpful to apply Darwinian language too widely. Conquest of nation by nation is too distant for Darwinian explanations to…
  8. I really want to say that there are no major disagreements ... I think the tendency of American intellectuals to learn their evolution from…

All Richard Dawkins quotes