Stephen Jay Gould Quotes - Page 9

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We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to place and make sense of us by focusing exclusively either on the uniqueness or the unity are doomed to failure. But we must not stop asking and questing because the answers are complex and ambiguous.

Stephen Jay Gould

Unity, Essentials, Asking

Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.250, W. W. Norton & Company

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Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower" animals with simple nervous systems arise as genetic products of natural selection, then human behavior should have a similar basis.

Stephen Jay Gould

Animal, Simple, Views

"Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Our Natural Place", p. 243, 1983.

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I picture several reviewers of my own books as passing a long future lodged between Brutus and Judas in the jaws of Satan.

Stephen Jay Gould

Book, Long, Brutus

Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.9, W. W. Norton & Company

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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.

Stephen Jay Gould

Plato, Philosophy, Philosophical

Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.177, W. W. Norton & Company

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We must shed the old stereotype of anarchists as bearded bomb throwers furtively stalking about city streets at night.

Stephen Jay Gould

Night, Cities, Bombs

Stephen Jay Gould (1991). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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We must [it has been arued] go beyond reductionism to a holistic recognition that biology and culture interpenetrate in an inextricable manner.

Stephen Jay Gould

Culture, Recognition, Biology

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Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.

Stephen Jay Gould

Book, Design, Example

"The Panda's Thumb". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Double Trouble", pp. 38-40, 1980.

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I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy.

Stephen Jay Gould

Lying, Perspective, Alternatives

Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.51, W. W. Norton & Company

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Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and skill to the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons. Charles R. Knight, most celebrated of artists in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to this day.

Stephen Jay Gould

Science, Artist, Animal

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

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Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.

Stephen Jay Gould

Creative, Heartless, Information

Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.201, W. W. Norton & Company

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Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.

Stephen Jay Gould

Historical, Different, Currents

Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.63, W. W. Norton & Company

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Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the persuasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal adult behavior in lower races.

Stephen Jay Gould

Children, White, Race

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Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.

Stephen Jay Gould

Failure, Science, Errors

Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.163, Harvard University Press

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[Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science.

Stephen Jay Gould

Religion, Atheism, Evolution

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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.

Stephen Jay Gould

Atheism, Cosmic, Fortuitous

"Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?" (p. 327), 1995.

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... each with its own beauty, and each with a story to tell.

Stephen Jay Gould

Beauty, Stories, Evolution

Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.12, W. W. Norton & Company

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I don't think academic writing ever was wonderful. However, science used to be much less specialized.

Stephen Jay Gould

Writing, Thinking, Wonderful

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Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

Stephen Jay Gould

Two, Three, Evolution

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... a local, indigenous, American bizarre-ity.

Stephen Jay Gould

Atheism, Bizarre, Indigenous

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Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence of all transitional forms by ignoring those that have been found, and continuing to taunt us with admittedly frequent examples of absence.

Stephen Jay Gould

Yield, Example, Facts

Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore."

Stephen Jay Gould

Real, Thinking, Land

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No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.

Stephen Jay Gould

Order, Ties, Religion

Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

Stephen Jay Gould

Past, History, Causes

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All evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence... I had to place myself amidst the variation.

Stephen Jay Gould

Essence, Variation, Biologist

Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, p.476, W. W. Norton & Company

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Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome.

Stephen Jay Gould

Rome, Fossils, Causes

Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.34, W. W. Norton & Company

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Latest quotes from interviews

"How did scientists get money in the past? They were either lucky and independently wealthy, like Darwin, or they had patrons, like Galileo. Universities or governments have become patrons only in the last few generations. Many of the great scientists of the past were in debt to their patrons in the same sense that modern scientists are influenced by what their granting agencies want."

- Stephen Jay Gould,

www.motherjones.com, added Nov 26, 2017

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Stephen Jay Gould

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Born: September 10, 1941
Died: May 20, 2002
Occupation: Paleontologist
Cite this Page: Citation

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