"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists"
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Source: Bully for Brontosaurus. Book by Stephen Jay Gould. An Essay on a Pig Roast, p. 437, 1991.
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