Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth5 July 1904
CountryGermany
anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently.
Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.
Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.
Evolution as such is no longer a theory for a modern author. It is as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun.
Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts
most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.
Life is simply the reification of the process of living.
Most modern authors failed to distinguish between two very different phenomena: the production of a new taxon, and the production of a new phenotype.
I have been unable to discover in Darwin's writings any connection between allopatric speciation and change of evolutionary rate.
I did not claim that every genetic change in a founder population is a genetic revolution. Evidently it requires a special constellation for the occurrence of a more drastic genetic reorganization.
No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential.
I did not claim that speciation occurs only in founder populations.
All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population.