"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"The myriad valleys could have arisen anywhere on the landscape. The current positions are quite accidental. If we could repeat the experiment, we might obtain no valleys at all, or a completely different system. Yet we now stand at the shore line contemplating the fine spacing of valleys and their even contact with the sea. How easy it is to be misled and to assume that no other landscape could possibly have arisen."
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Source: Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company
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