Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution
Imagine a big puzzle with lots and lots of tiny pieces. Each piece is like a characteristic or trait of living things, such as having wings, being able to swim, or having a certain color. Biology is the study of all these different traits, but it's hard to understand why they exist or how they work together without the key to the puzzle - evolution.
Evolution is like the big picture that shows you how all the little puzzle pieces fit together. It's the idea that living things have changed over time, and that the traits they have now are the result of millions of years of adaptation to their environments. For example, birds have wings because they evolved from dinosaurs that needed to fly to escape predators. Fish have gills because they evolved from ancestors that lived in water and needed to breathe underwater.
Without evolution, we wouldn't understand why certain traits exist or how they fit into the bigger picture of life on Earth. We wouldn't know why animals are different from one another or how they're related. It's like trying to solve a puzzle without the picture on the box - you can try to fit the pieces together, but it's much harder to understand what you're looking at without the full picture.
So, when scientists say "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," they mean that evolution is the key to understanding all the different pieces of the puzzle of life. It helps us make sense of why things are the way they are and how they got that way.
Evolution is like the big picture that shows you how all the little puzzle pieces fit together. It's the idea that living things have changed over time, and that the traits they have now are the result of millions of years of adaptation to their environments. For example, birds have wings because they evolved from dinosaurs that needed to fly to escape predators. Fish have gills because they evolved from ancestors that lived in water and needed to breathe underwater.
Without evolution, we wouldn't understand why certain traits exist or how they fit into the bigger picture of life on Earth. We wouldn't know why animals are different from one another or how they're related. It's like trying to solve a puzzle without the picture on the box - you can try to fit the pieces together, but it's much harder to understand what you're looking at without the full picture.
So, when scientists say "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," they mean that evolution is the key to understanding all the different pieces of the puzzle of life. It helps us make sense of why things are the way they are and how they got that way.