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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
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Stephen Jay Gould
Age: 60 †
Born: 1941
Born: September 10
Died: 2002
Died: May 20
Evolutionary Biologist
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Paleontologist
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More quotes by Stephen Jay Gould
We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.
Stephen Jay Gould
With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.
Stephen Jay Gould
I dreamed of becoming a scientist, in general, and a paleontologist, in particular, ever since the Tyrannosaurus skeleton awed and scared me.
Stephen Jay Gould
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.
Stephen Jay Gould
I hardly recognize what I do well. I just do it.
Stephen Jay Gould
Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.
Stephen Jay Gould
Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.
Stephen Jay Gould
Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.
Stephen Jay Gould
Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of the bricks, perhaps even the keystone, of truth's temple. Now most scientists of vision hope to foment revolution. We are, therefore, awash in revolutions, most self-proclaimed.
Stephen Jay Gould
If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.
Stephen Jay Gould
Death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.
Stephen Jay Gould
Natural selection may lead to benefits for species, but these `higher' advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of natural selection's causal mechanism: differential reproductive success of individuals.
Stephen Jay Gould
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
No one should feel at all offended or threatened by the obvious fact that we are not all born entirely blank, or entirely the same, in our mixture of the broad behavioral propensities defining what we call temperament.
Stephen Jay Gould
Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense.
Stephen Jay Gould
Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.
Stephen Jay Gould
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
Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.
Stephen Jay Gould
Facts do not 'speak for themselves' they are read in the light of theory.
Stephen Jay Gould
Most books, after all, are ephemeral their specifics, several years later, inspire about as much interest as daily battle reports from the Hundred Years' War.
Stephen Jay Gould