# Ayala and Avise, *Essential Readings in Evolutionary Biology*, 2014 > [!cite] > Ayala, Francisco J., and John C. Avise, eds. *Essential Readings in Evolutionary Biology*. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Internet Archive. [http://archive.org/details/essentialreading0000unse_x0j0](http://archive.org/details/essentialreading0000unse_x0j0). --- ‘A famous phrase in the biological sciences conveys a pithy truth: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” When the evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky penned those words in 1973 \[…].’ [[Ayala and Avise, Essential Readings in Evolutionary Biology, 2014|(Ayala and Avise 2014, ix)]] ^0af800 ‘ca. 600 BC. The idea that different kinds of organisms can be transformed one into another, including humans into animals and dragons into human form, is a familiar theme in the mythology of many cultures. Among the philosophers of ancient Greece, Anaximander proposed that animals could metamorphose from one kind into another, and Empedocles speculated that organisms were made up of various combinations of preexisting parts. Some of these organisms would be successful and thus become, by a kind of natural selection, those that continue to exist.’ [[Ayala and Avise, Essential Readings in Evolutionary Biology, 2014|(Ayala and Avise 2014, xi)]] ^8787e5 ‘ca. 500 BC. The Greek philosopher Plato advanced that the objects, including organisms, that we perceive with our senses are imperfect representations of *forms*, which are prefect and timeless but transcend our perceptions.’ [[Ayala and Avise, Essential Readings in Evolutionary Biology, 2014|(Ayala and Avise 2014, xi)]] ^506df9