"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role."
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Source: Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company
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