Quote

The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion

Stephen Jay Gould

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Knowledge
Religion
Science
Irrationalism
Enemy

More quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
Forelimbs of people, porpoises, bats and horses provide the classic example of homology in most textbooks. They look different, and do different things, but are built of the same bones. No engineer, starting from scratch each time, would have built such disparate structures from the same parts.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
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.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant, intellectually unsound, and highly injurious.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
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
Image
People may believe correct things for the damndest and weirdest of wrong reasons.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
Facts do not 'speak for themselves' they are read in the light of theory.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
Current utility and historical origin are different subjects.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
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
Image
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm.
Stephen Jay Gould
Image
The literal record was not a hopelessly and imperfect fraction of truly insensible gradation within large populations but an accurate reflection of the actual process identified by evolutionists as the chief motor of biological change. The theory of punctuated equilibrium was, in its initial formulation, little more than this insight adumbrated.
Stephen Jay Gould