Top 17 John Maynard Smith Quotes
#1. So far, we have been able to study only one evolving system and we cannot wait for interstellar flight to provide us with a second. If we want to discover generalizations about evolving systems, we will have to look at artificial ones.
John Maynard Smith
#2. Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population.
John Maynard Smith
#4. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.
John Maynard Smith
#6. Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.
John Maynard Smith
#7. It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.
John Maynard Smith
#8. Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed
John Maynard Smith
#9. It is in the nature of science that once a position becomes orthodox it should be suggested to criticism ... It does not follow that, because a position is orthodox, it is wrong.
John Maynard Smith
#10. Mathematics is so much easier than words mathematics makes things clear that words merely muddle and confuse and mess up.
John Maynard Smith
#12. I can't go around believing in a God that believes suffering is good for me.
John Maynard Smith
#13. Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.
John Maynard Smith
#14. I think we invent jargon because it saves times talking to one-another.
John Maynard Smith
#15. The evolution of sex is the hardest problem in evolutionary biology.
John Maynard Smith
#16. Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.
John Maynard Smith
#17. In living organisms, nucleic acid molecules are the only indefinite hereditary replicators, or at least they were until the invention of language and music.
John Maynard Smith
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
