I'm trying to recall a quote that I believe may have been uttered by Haldane.

It was regarding how natural selection has no ability to see the future or to retain a trait now that may be useful later.

Was it his famous elephant in the room..

"Finding purpose is just like the elephant in the room; once it's somehow noticed - there appears to be no getting rid of it."

Nice quote, but not that one!

Something like....

A trait can't be retained in the proterozoic just because it would be useful in the palaeozoic.

But more elegantly said than my crude memory of it.

I remember Dawkins writing something like that in one of his books.

Evolving wrote:I remember Dawkins writing something like that in one of his books.

That's right - but he was quoting someone else; Haldane, I think.

"I will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian."

It's basically the same point, but stated differently.

I'll have to go digging in some Dawkins' books as I recall it being there too!

I think it was in Mount Improbable; but I'm not sure.

Ok, thanks - I will dig it out.

Would this quote from Stephen Jay Gould be what you're looking for ???

That's not it either, but I am glad I made this thread to see how the same point can be expressed in so many different ways. I've got all my books stowed in plastic crates at the moment as its termite season here, but I'm going to dig out Mount Improbable because I also have a vague recollection similar to Evolving's that it's a quote cited by Dawkins.

Let us know when you've found it. I'm curious now myself.

Evolving wrote:Let us know when you've found it. I'm curious now myself.

Look what I found:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/educa ... l#p1503242

Spearthrower wrote:

Dawkins wrote:As Sydney Brenner has remarked, natural selection could not be expected to have favoured some useless mutation in the Cambrian simply because 'it might come in handy in the Cretaceous'.

So still a fragment of a quote, and still can't source it.

I get the sense that Brenner said this sometime in a talk rather than writing it down in a book.