But all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence. Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measures for a central tendency. Means and medians are the abstractions.
Stephen Jay Gould
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[A]lthough species may be discrete, they have no immutable essence. Variation is the raw material of evolutionary change. It represents the fundamental reality of nature, not an accident about a created norm. Variation is primary; essences are illusory. Species must be defined as ranges of irreducible variation.
Stephen Jay Gould
Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on this side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory.
Stephen Jay Gould
If E1 is the cause of E2, then a small variation (a mark) in E1 is associated with a small variation in E2, whereas small variations in E2 are not associated with variations in E1. If we wish to express even more clearly that this concept does not contain the concept of temporal order, we can express it in the following form, where events that show a slight variation are designated E*: E1E2, E1*E2*, E1E2* and never the combination E1*E2.
Hans Reichenbach
"Sexual reproduction exists solely as a means to defeat parasites. By mixing male and female genes, sex produces offspring not exactly like either the male or female—making each generation different from the last, and presenting a moving target to intruders intent on compromising this system. ... Even with this variation, parasites continue to pose a threat... and parasitism evolves and moves through any system—not just living things. The less variation there is in a system, the more readily parasites will evolve to infest it..."
Daniel Suarez
Variation is clearly nature's way.
Jaime Jackson
Gould, Stephen Jay
Govorov, Leonid
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