It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example. Fred Hoyle More Quotes by Fred Hoyle More Quotes From Fred Hoyle The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it (1040,000).... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence. Fred Hoyle theory-of-evolutionnumberslife The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein. Fred Hoyle boeing-747origin-of-lifejunk A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. Fred Hoyle if-there-is-a-godnumbersscience Imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik's cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have a chance of arriving by random shuffling, of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. Fred Hoyle cellstryingorder Life cannot have had a random beginning. ... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. Fred Hoyle enzymestrialstwo A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics. Fred Hoyle if-there-is-a-godcommon-sensescience Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect deliberate.... It is, therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligence -even to the limit of God. Fred Hoyle origin-of-lifelimitsthinking Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published by a journal today, you will run against a paradigm and the editors will turn it down Fred Hoyle editorsrunningtrying In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth. Fred Hoyle origin-of-lifesupportearth Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards. Fred Hoyle spaceinspirationalfunny Science is prediction, not explanation. Fred Hoyle predictionsexplanationscience It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century, still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner... Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific. Fred Hoyle ironicselffun I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy. Fred Hoyle curiousscientistdoe Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose. Fred Hoyle powerfultakenideas On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much less the palatable of the two. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms. . . . On philosophical grounds too I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation. Fred Hoyle philosophicalsightideas There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for. Fred Hoyle meaning-of-lifeplansknows I have little hesitation in saying that as a result a sickly pall now hangs over the big bang theory. As I have mentioned earlier, when a pattern of facts becomes set against a theory, experience shows that it rarely recovers. Fred Hoyle bangspatternslittles The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time. Fred Hoyle suggestionsnumbersmight We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today. Fred Hoyle differencestodaylong It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness. Fred Hoyle greatnessmistakemen
