"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature."
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Source: Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company
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