- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981:
"Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. ... There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination."
Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 1986:
"...in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed."
Theodosius Dobzhansky "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution": (http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml)
"...evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun."
Edited by THOTH, 30 January 2004 - 09:35 AM.