# Quote — Carl Sagan, Dragons of Eden

> Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature. This resonance, extracted by natural selection, between our brains and the universe may help explain a quandary set by Einstein: The most incomprehensible property of the universe, he said, is that it is so comprehensible.

- Author: [Carl Sagan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan.md)
- Book: [Dragons of Eden](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden.md)
- Page: 242
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Dragons_of_Eden_(1977)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/natural-selection-has

## More from this book

> A mutation in a DNA molecule within a chromosome of a skin cell in my index finger has no influence on heredity. Fingers are not involved, at least directly, in the propagation of the species.

p. 27 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/a-mutation-in-a-dna.md)

> There is a popular contention that half or more of the brain is unused. From an evolutionary point of view this would be quite extraordinary: why should it have evolved if it had no function? But actually the statement is made on very little evidence.

p. 31 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/there-is-a-popular.md)

> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

p. 7 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/absence-of-evidence.md)