Species evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.
Interpretation
Species adapt to their environment without a predetermined purpose or goal.
The quote by George Gaylord Simpson emphasizes that evolution is a process driven by the necessity of adaptation to changing environments rather than a directed phenomenon towards a specific endpoint. It suggests that species develop traits and characteristics out of survival instincts, responding to the conditions around them rather than striving for an ideal state or form.
In practice
In a science class discussion about evolution, one might use this quote to illustrate the principle of adaptation.
If a sect does officially insist that its structure of belief demands that evolution be false, then no compromise is possible. An honest and competent biology teacher can only conclude that the sect's beliefs are wrong and that its religion is a false one.
Now we do have many examples of transitional sequences.
He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.
Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.
Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind
To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.
Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
...It would be possible to make much more progress than has been made if the NCI knew its job better, knew how to make discoveries...The NCI really does not know how to make discoveries....So long as the NCI is not willing to follow up ideas that seem good to people who have had experience making discoveries, the work of the NCI is going to be pedestrian.
The fact that mathematics does such a good job of describing the Universe is a mystery that we don't understand. And a debt that we will probably never be able to repay.
By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions.
Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.
The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large.
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