Anatomical Quotes (3 quotes)
Since natural selection demands only adequacy, elegance of design is not relevant; any combination of behavioural adjustment, physiological regulation, or anatomical accommodation that allows survival and reproduction may be favoured by selection. Since all animals are caught in a phylogenetic trap by the nature of past evolutionary adjustments, it is to be expected that a given environmental challenge will be met in a variety of ways by different animals. The delineation of the patterns of the accommodations of diverse types of organisms to the environment contributes much of the fascination of ecologically relevant physiology.
In 'The roles of physiology and behaviour in the maintenance of homeostasis in the desert environment.', Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology (1964), 11.
To your care and recommendation am I indebted for having replaced a half-blind mathematician with a mathematician with both eyes, which will especially please the anatomical members of my Academy.
Letter (26 Jul 1766) to Jean le Rond D’Alembert appreciating his recommendation to bring the younger Joseph-Louis Lagrange (age 30) to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin when Leonhart Euler (age 59), vacated the post of director of mathematics. Euler lost the sight of one eye to disease in 1740, and a cataract took the sight of the remaining eye in 1766. As quoted in Florian Cajori, 'Frederick the Great on Mathematics and Mathematicians', The American Mathematical Monthly (Mar 1927), 34, No. 3, 128.
Using archaeological and anatomical science rather than artistic interpretation makes this the most accurate likeness ever created.
…...