Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

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  In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mean, Science, Apples

  Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes "Evolution as Fact and Theory" (1983)

• Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Hope, Fear, Lying

  Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.36, W. W. Norton & Company

• Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Ideas, Apples

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Evolution as Fact and Theory", pp. 254 - 55, 1983.

• The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Humility, Science, Arrogance

• Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Intellectual, Culture

  1990 In The Independent, 24 Jan.

• The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Thinking, Fog

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Full House”, p.57, Harvard University Press

• No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a road cut.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lonely, Creativity, Science

• 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?.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Teacher, Teaching, Science

• Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Degrees, Would Be

• 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.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Commitment, Science, Problem

• Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Cousin, Successful, Science

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

• The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Understanding, Progress

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.173, Harvard University Press

• We are the accidental result of an unplanned process ... the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable product of any definite process.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Evolution, Process

• Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter movement ... who believe that every word in the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Believe, Home, Mean

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.270, Harvard University Press

• Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Independent, Science, Information

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

• History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Time, Science, History

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

• Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Important, Paleontology

• Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where they should and must be ... We inhabit a world of human differences and predilections, but the extrapolation of these facts to theories of rigid limits is ideology.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Essence, Differences

  Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.36, W. W. Norton & Company

• In the great debates of early-nineteenth century geology, catastrophists followed the stereotypical method of objective science-empirical literalism. They believed what they saw, interpolated nothing, and read the record of the rocks directly.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Rocks, Records

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.105, W. W. Norton & Company

• Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Strong, Science, Giving

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.155, Harvard University Press

• Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. If I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Beach, Morning, Science

• Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Future, Science, Thinking

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.310, W. W. Norton & Company

• It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Running, Science, Acceptance

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, p.478, W. W. Norton & Company

• A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Men, Doe

  1977 Ever Since Darwin.

• I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religious, Commitment, Science

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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