Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould

Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist

Stephen Jay Gould was a prominent paleontologist and evolutionary biologist known for his theory of punctuated equilibrium and influential writings.

Science Evolution People Lying Thinking Views
Born
September 10, 1941
Quotes
308
Rank
#259

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Stephen Jay Gould quotes (page 4 of 16)

308 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness."

Wise Long Soul
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality."

Plato Philosophy Philosophical
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's."

Writing Issues Ethical Questions
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you're good at come naturally. And since most people are pretty modest instead of an arrogant S.O.B. like me, what comes naturally, you don't see as a special skill. It's just you. It's what you've always done."

Work Passion Skills
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"[G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of chemical processes. Genes do not make "novelty seeking" or any other complex and overt behavior. Predisposition via a long chain of complex chemical reactions, mediated through a more complex series of life's circumstances, does not equal identification or even causation."

Long Doe Enzymes
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction."

Thinking Understanding Principles
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Pictures are not incidental frills to a text; they are essences of our distinctive way of knowing."

Essence Knowing Way
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought."

Atheism Cosmic Fortuitous
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate interests and work in areas of deepest personal meaning."

Life Is Short Passionate Chance
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied."

Home Average Taught Us
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Memory is a fascinating trickster. Words and images have enormous power and can easily displace actual experience over the years."

Memories Years Enormous
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light."

Light Enemy Dying
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness."

Soul Progress Pedestal
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations."

Lying Foundation Evolution
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Without a commitment to science and rationality in its proper domain, there can be no solution to the problems that engulf us. Still, the Yahoos never rest."

Commitment Science Problem
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage-good teaching-than a bill forcing our honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?."

Teacher Teaching Science
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"I'm not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things - not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them."

Baseball Writing Trying
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents."

Biblical Order Years
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Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist, Evolutionary Biologist
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"Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival."

Thinking Mirrors Perspective
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