George C. Williams Quotes

• Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don’t do anything special to avoid it.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human, Extinction

• I think that my main criticism in that book was directed at the general assumption that adaptation characterizes populations and species, rather than simply the individuals in the populations and species.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Criticism, Assumption

• Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Generalization, Strictly, Empirical

• Job’s avoidance of rebellion against God has nothing to do with God being good or wise or anything like that; it’s strictly because God is so powerful, and you don’t fight something when you are so much weaker than that which you would fight.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in God

  Tags in Rebellion, Against

• I am convinced that it is the light and the way.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Convinced

• The general rule is that anything that is passed on in reproduction does not undergo senescence.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reproduction

• Many traditional religions foster attitudes that ought to have disappeared as biological understanding accumulated over the last century.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Attitude

  Tags in Religions, Foster

• The moment-of-conception fallacy implies that fertilization is a simple process with never a doubt as to whether it has or has not happened.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Conception, Moment, Fertilization

• The only realistic view is that a human life arises gradually, which is not much help in making personal decisions or devising public policy.

  George C. Williams

  Topics in Decisions

  Tags in Human Life, Personal

• Ever since then, all descendant vertebrates have had the forward end of the digestive system and the forward end of the respiratory system very much involved with each other. This manifests itself in the human body with a crossing of the two systems in the throat.

  George C. Williams

George C. Williams (10)

Birth:	12th May, 1926
Death:	8th September, 2010
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Biologist

About

George Christopher Williams was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. He was an American evolutionary biologist. He was a professor of biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who was best known for his vigorous critique of group selection. He received a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1955. In 1992 he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He won the Crafoord Prize for Bioscience jointly with Ernst Mayr and John Maynard Smith in 1999. He wrote several books include: Adaptation and Natural Selection, Group Selection, Sex and Evolution, and Plan and Purpose in Nature.

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