Darwin asked 'Can it be doubted, from the struggle each individual has to obtain subsistence, that any minute variation in structure, habits or instincts, adapting that individual better to new conditions, would tell upon its vigour and health?' (Darwin, 1842).
After all, the principal reason Robert Grant and his successors amassed zoological specimens at all was not to study the minute variation within species or between closely related species (an activity that many zoologists were getting excited about at the time) but to give medical students an overview of comparative anatomy.
Thus, the environment is kept so constant (both between and within experiments), that any remaining minute variation in it must be infinitely smaller than any of the stimuli known to trigger turning behavior [30].
"To me it is no coincidence that these two men, who were looking at a very large group with minute variations, made such fundamental breakthroughs.
In some cases, they use computer programs to profit from tiny differences between the prices of derivatives and their underlying assets — the minute variations between an exchange-traded fund, for example, and the individual stocks underpinning it.
One of the most prestigious and costly complications to be found is the tourbillon movement, an intricate mechanism that eliminates time-keeping errors caused by minute variations that result from shifts in gravity whenever a watch changes position.
It is governed by an exquisite array of receptors that can distinguish minute variations in the external environment.
A hierarchical structure of matter began to form from minute variations in the mass density of space.
For millennia, our brains have evolved to perceive minute variations in the volume and cadence of a human voice.
The latest generation of espresso machines allow not only precise control over water temperature — the bulk of innovation in espresso machines over the past century has been devoted to water-temperature stability and control — but minute variations in pressure in the course of a shot's extraction.
