1
" Natural selection may be unconscious but, as Darwin and his successors made clear, it is the opposite of a random force. It can drive changes in an organism in a very linear, per sis tent fashion—as had been observed in the laboratory, in nature, and in simulations such as the one that modeled eye evolution. Denton was wrong about evolution’s being one big lottery. The correct analogy would be a game of darts in which the players cannot see the target. Some darts will find their mark while the majority will miss—a random process. But the rules of the game eliminate all but the best-thrown darts. Because nature tosses an im mense number of darts—the mutation rate in any single gene in an organism will run in the millions—natural selection has plenty of well-targeted darts to choose from, and the march toward new and complex forms is not so difficult to understand, after all. But presenting an accurate meta phor would not have supported an attack on evolution. "
― Edward Humes , Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
2
" Science, at least as it has been practiced for the last century or two, begins by assembling facts—the data—and then seeks an overarching theory to unify and explain those facts. Whether it’s the big bang theory or plate tectonics or germ theory, from the cosmic to the microscopic, the approach is the same. Ignoring or denying inconvenient facts is not permitted. Trying to uncover facts that disprove a treasured theory is encouraged. This is part of the modern scientific method, which holds that theories should be subjected to rigorous attempts to prove them false before they become widely accepted (or discarded as incorrect). In the law, however, the process works in exactly the opposite direction. "
― Edward Humes , Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
7
" They failed to realize that in science, gaps are different from those in murder cases. Every important and well-accepted theory has its share of gaps in the supporting data—and this is particularly true of historical scientific theories that rely on evidence such as ancient fossils (in the case of evolution) or other indirect observations, as contrasted with watching chemicals react in a test tube in real time. The theory of gravity, the big bang theory, the theory of relativity, quantum theory, atomic theory, plate tectonics theory—their histories all consist not simply of eureka moments in the lab, but also of a gradual filling in of gaps, a process that continues to this day. That is the nature of science, which continually tests its theories with new information. With large, explanatory theories such as evolution, the fact that there are gaps in the data is expected—problems arises only when gaps are filled and new information doesn’t fit the theory. Then scientists say that a theory has been “falsified.” This is why ancient Greek mathematicians and naturalists stopped believing the Earth was flat long before cameras were launched into space to photograph the globe—they knew the Earth couldn’t be flat, because the available data did not fit the theory anymore. Ships sailed off in one direction but did not find or fall off an edge. On the other hand, the theory that the Earth is a globe was accepted centuries before it was actually “proved.” That didn’t mean there weren’t gaps—such as why objects on the “bottom” of the globe didn’t fall off into space, as the principles of gravity were not well understood until much later (and gaps in that understanding remain to this day). So gaps in theories are not only real but expected in science—and they do not in themselves disprove or discredit a theory. The board members didn’t grasp that distinction, however, and so they enthusiastically endorsed mentioning “gaps” in the belief that this statement represented a valid criticism of "
― Edward Humes , Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
8
" Darwin found that if you looked closely enough, nature conveyed a very different message. How could, for instance, the Galápagos Islands serve as home to thirteen separate species of finches, each similar to the other, yet each peculiarly adapted with different-shaped beaks for their particular island habitats? Clearly these finches had migrated over time from the mainland and from one island to another, and then, once separated, had begun to diverge and to become distinct from one another. But how? And why? Why did the giant sloths, whose bones Darwin recovered on his voyage, go extinct, while other creatures thrived in the same environment at the same time? And how was it that some animals seemed poorly designed for their environments, in defiance of Paley’s perfect watchmaker—woodpeckers that lived on treeless terrain, land birds with webbed feet—yet they managed to adapt and survive through makeshift means that no divine designer would ever have intended? Why did pythons have vestigial legs, and why did the bones inside the wings of a bat parallel the bones in the human hand and arm? This was evidence not of a master design, Darwin realized, but of a slow and gradual change in existing forms, spread across the ages, inherited from remote—and shared—ancestors. The evidence he painstakingly assembled on his voyage, then presented, bit by bit, in his classic book, pointed to very slow, very gradual changes in living things over millions of years, to creatures suddenly dying out and disappearing when their forms no longer allowed them to survive in a changing climate or environment, and to new forms of life that emerged and thrived in their place. "
― Edward Humes , Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
9
" WE CAN ALLOW SATELLITES, PLANETS, SUNS, UNIVERSE, NAY WHOLE SYSTEMS OF UNIVERSES, TO BE GOVERNED BY LAWS, BUT THE SMALLEST INSECT, WE WISH TO BE CREATED AT ONCE BY SPECIAL ACT. —Charles Darwin "
― Edward Humes , Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
10
" a principle that more recently has become known as exaptation. Darwin explained that some features could develop to serve a different purpose initially, then be adapted for a new purpose later. A small, feathery flap, for instance, too small for flight, could be used to keep a creature warm in cold weather. A bird frequently tucks its head under a wing when sleeping or when cold; what if this was the original purpose of the structure that eventually became a wing? Natural selection could favor these natural capes and select for larger and more thermally efficient variations. If the creature happened to live in trees, eventually this newly shaped limb could prove useful for jumping and gliding, at which point natural selection would begin to emphasize variations that aided flight. Bird evolution would then be well on its way. "
― Edward Humes , Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
