George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpsonwas an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution, The meaning of evolutionand The major features of evolution. He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibriumand dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth16 June 1902
CountryUnited States of America
Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.
Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but is his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny.
I don't know where to put whales. I'm sticking them here, but I don't have any reason for it.
Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind
The fact -- not theory -- that evolution has occurred and the Darwinian theory as to how it occurred have become so confused in popular opinion that the distinction must be stressed.