[A]lthough species may be discrete, they have no immutable essence. Variation is the raw material of evolutionary change. It represents the fundamental reality of nature, not an accident about a created norm. Variation is primary; essences are illusory. Species must be defined as ranges of irreducible variation.

We often think, naively, that missing data are the primary impediments to intellectual progress-just find the right facts and all problems will dissipate. But …

Antiessentialist thinking forces us to view the world differently. We must accept shadings and continua as fundamental. We lose criteria for judgment by compar…

The progress of science requires more than new data; it needs novel frameworks and contexts. And where do these fundamentally new views of the world arise? The…

If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among …

We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biolog…

... the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution ...