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At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation.

Stephen Jay Gould

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Stephen Jay Gould
Age: 60 †
Born: 1941
Born: September 10
Died: 2002
Died: May 20
Evolutionary Biologist
Historian
Paleontologist
Pathologist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Voice Actor
Writer
Queens
New York
Explaining
Immediate
Prominence
Minimum
Pathways
Rise
Evolutionary
Advantage
Constraints
Equal
Adaptation
History
Advantages
Time
Imposed

More quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

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Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
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The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.
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The median isn't the message.
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Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.
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Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another of our previous conviction about our own self-importance.
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People may believe correct things for the damndest and weirdest of wrong reasons.
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The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations.
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Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidedly unpleasant for species caught up in the throes of their power.
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The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
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Memory is a fascinating trickster. Words and images have enormous power and can easily displace actual experience over the years.
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What's important is that all human knowledge be made available to all intelligent people who want to learn it.
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In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each.
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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.
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The only universal attribute of scientific statements resides in their potential fallibility. If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science.
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If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.
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We live in a profoundly nonintellectual culture, made all the worse by a passive hedonism abetted by the spread of wealth and its dissipation into countless electronic devices that impart the latest in entertainment and supposed information - all in short (and loud) doses of easy listening.
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The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion
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All science is intelligent inference excessive literalism is delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence.
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The enemy is not fundamentalism it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the liberal rhetoric of equal time. But mistake it not.
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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.
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