Evolve This!

Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.

(Gould, S.J. (1980) "Sociobiology and the Theory of Natural Selection" in SOCIOBIOLOGY: BEYOND NATURE/NURTURE?, G.W. Barlow and J. Silverberg eds., Westview Press Inc., Boulder, Colorado pp. 257-269. Reprinted in PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY, M. Ruse ed., Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, pp. 253-263.)