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Professor Pierre Grasse – L'Evolution du Vivant

Where is the gambler, however obsessed with his passion, who would be crazy enough to bet on the roulette of random evolution?  The creation, by grains of dust carried by the wind, of Durer's Melancholia, has a probability less infinitesimal than the construction of an eye through the mishap which might befall the DNA molecule – mishaps which have no connection whatsoever with the future functions of the age.  Day dreaming is permissible but science should not succumb to it.......

Variation is one thing, evolution quite another, this cannot be emphasised strongly enough … Let us repeat it once more; mutations do not provide an explanation for the nature or temporal order of the phenomena of evolution; they do not create evolutionary novelties; they cannot account for the precise fitting together of the parts of an organ, and the mutual co-ordination of organs....  Mutations provide change, but not progress...

The repertory of mutations, or mutation spectrum of a species has nothing to do with evolution.  The mutations of the Whitlow grass [Erophila verna]; of the Wild Pansy [Viola tricolour]; of the plantains [Plantago]; of the Candytuft [Iberis], which add up to a rich and well catalogued assortment, are the irrefutable proof of it.  When all is said, Erophila verna, Viola tricolour etc despite their numerous mutations, do not evolve.  This is a fact.  The various races of the dogs and all other domesticated animals represent merely the mutation spectrum of the species; manipulated by artificial selection.  The same applies to garden plants.  Nothing in this amounts to evolution.