Peter Louis Moreau de Maupertuis Quotes on Time (1 Quote)

Two years later, this eighteenth-century French mathematician and astronomer hinted with admirable prescience at the role of genetics in evolution 'The elementary particles which form the embryo are each drawn from the corresponding structure in the parent, and conserve a sort of remembrance of their previous form, so that in the offspring they will reflect and reproduce a resemblance to the parents ... We can thus readily explain how new species are formed... by supposing that the elementary particles may not always retain the order which they present in the parents, but may fortuitously produce differences, which, multiplying and accumulating, have resulted in the infinite variety of species which we see at the present time.'