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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
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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
Passing
Brutus
Picture
Lodged
Books
Jaws
Future
Judas
Book
Reviewers
Long
Passings
Satan
Several
More quotes by Stephen Jay Gould
Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [...] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.
Stephen Jay Gould
... a local, indigenous, American bizarre-ity.
Stephen Jay Gould
Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.
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
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.
Stephen Jay Gould
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
If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are not likely to detect the event of speciation itself. It happens too fast, in too small a group, isolated too far from the ancestral range.
Stephen Jay Gould
Pictures are not incidental frills to a text they are essences of our distinctive way of knowing.
Stephen Jay Gould
Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.
Stephen Jay Gould
Science is not 'organized common sense' at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition.
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 pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.
Stephen Jay Gould
What's important is that all human knowledge be made available to all intelligent people who want to learn it.
Stephen Jay Gould
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of Paleontology. Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.
Stephen Jay Gould
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
If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.
Stephen Jay Gould
But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity - our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to believe what we desire rather than what we observe.
Stephen Jay Gould
If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.
Stephen Jay Gould
World views are social constructions and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully.
Stephen Jay Gould
Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement
Stephen Jay Gould
