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Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

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Famous Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

“Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature.”

WorldWayFeelingsCausesEventsPrejudiceComplexesStriveMake SenseDesperateGutsDescriptionConventionalConfusingAdequateRandomnessGut Feelings
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.”

WorldWellsHas BeensMadeDifferentMatterEnoughMightPastForceEnvironmentFineProveMassBuiltPerfectionCurrentsAvailableCuriousOur WorldImperfectionTransformedSelectionMight Have BeenAdaptationJuryAdaptedQuirkyOmnipotentRiggedOptimal
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.”

HumanityUniverseLibertyRevolutionWallShapesAdvantageTradeNewtonFranklinHuxleyTrotsky
Book:Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time
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“Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual locks, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny because they seem so obviously, even ineluctably, just. We know ourselves best and tend to view other creatures as mirrors of our own constitution and social arrangements. ( Aristotle , and nearly two millennia of successors, designated the large bee that leads the swarm as a king.”

KnowsTwoSeemsSocialDifficultUnderstandingViewsKingsCreaturesConstitutionMirrorsBeesLocksArrangementsScrutinyFactualSuccessorsImpedimentsSwarms
Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
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“Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.”

LawCoursesIndividualForeverRichEventsShapesLimitsMereSpeciesDetailsScalesTensionFascinatingLaws Of NatureExquisiteLarge ScaleContingencyFrills
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries have various fates: Most burn or unravel in the footsteps of time and the fires of later discovery. But their glory lies in their integrity as unified structures of great complexity and broad implication.”

MadeLyingFireFateIntegrityGloryDiscoveryStructureVariousFirmComplexityBroadsComprehensiveImplicationsFootstepsCoverageWovenUnifiedTapestry
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“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.”

FactsFoundSocialProgressCreationProductsTheoryEvolutionScientistConstructionInteractionWorldviewIntertwinedGreat ScientistSocial Construction
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted for the constraint of a definite "thing" cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw "evolution" or "social organization," not to mention the more mundane "digestion" or "self-interest," without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind.”

IfsMindIdeasSelfRealityWishSocialProcessInterestImaginationObjectsEvolutionDrawsConceptsOrganizationCamerasStructureScholarDefiniteRevealingSelf InterestMundaneConstraintsDigestionCandidPortrayingSocial OrganizationIconographyCandid Camera
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent data (for who needs proof of anything so obvious). And few intellectual activities can be more salutary than attempts to find out whether these rocks of ages might crumble at the slightest tap of an informational hammer.”

KnowsNeedsMightAgeRocksActivityIntellectualObviousProofTyrannyDataDecentHammersRecalcitrant
Book:Life's Grandeur: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin
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“When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness.”

NeedsLooksLongSoulMomentsCoursesWiseSourceImportanceMadnessWitClarityObservationExplanationNecksLengthFloodCompetingBrevityConjectureGiraffePoloniusRare MomentsMoments Of Clarity
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature.”

BookLiteratureCasesStudyWonderfulTheoryMajorsRacismImportanceHistoricalDataFascinatingLogicalMotivatedMisuseInconsistencyTracingPhrenologyRecapitulation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.”

LittlesLongHomeBeliefMillionsTaughtPlanetsEssentialsMajorsImportanceSpeciesAverageCornersAstronomyDefinedBiologyIngredientsCosmicRetreatGalaxyInitialsTaught UsGeologyGod ImageImmensity
Book:Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
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“Siphonophores do not convey the message a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts intimately connected and interacting in some higher, ineffable harmony. Nature revels in boundaries and distinctions; we inhabit a universe of structure. But since our universe of structure has evolved historically, it must present us with fuzzy boundaries, where one kind of thing grades into another.”

KindWholeUniverseHigherMessagesHarmonyStructureConnectedBoundariesThemeDistinctionGradesRomanticismInteractingIneffableFuzzy
Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
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“Antiessentialist thinking forces us to view the world differently. We must accept shadings and continua as fundamental. We lose criteria for judgment by comparison to some ideal: short people, retarded people, people of other beliefs, colors, and religions are people of full status.”

PeopleThinkingWorldBeliefForceLosesViewsAcceptingColorJudgmentIdealsFundamentalsComparisonCriteriaRetardedShort People
Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
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“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.”

NeedsMindFactsLyingViewsPerspectiveLogicMetaphorCaughtWoodsAgentsComparisonTransitionTrapsRelentlessExitGuidelinesSpectacles
Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
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“Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [...] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.”

WorldWayRealityBitsVisionWorryStruggleSeriousDemandIntellectualUnderstoodTinyBitesScholarFlawedPatchesBirthrightMayhemPedants
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium of new information leading from primal superstition to final exactitude. We know that the sun is hub of our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galápagos tortoise.”

IfsKnowsMindLittlesUniverseViewsSunInformationPlanetsTheoryMoonIntellectualFinalsCornersTiesSuperstitionsOur PlanetLiving ThingsRichnessPrimalTelescopesJupiterPageantGenealogyGalsNew InformationHubTortoisesExactitude
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWayWellsEnoughMagicStageParticularOrdinaryScientistTricksObjectivesMortalsPerformersArrogantPsychicsFooledScrutinyPhony
Book:The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)
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“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

NeedsWellsPhilosophyStoriesUseLawDifficultCasesExampleFieldsTheoryStandardsScientistFunctionComplexesInsightSillyDevicesMechanismAbstractionSpeculationIllustrationRhetoricalHypothetical
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

WellsMightFormNaturalEnvironmentGreaterBehaviorFunctionSimplicityLocalsComplexityYieldSelectionAdaptationNatural SelectionHabitatNatural Habitats
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright.”

IfsWorldLyingBehindsProgressTreeStageKeysEvolutionDiversityToughFundamentalsPersistenceMarchPassagesExpansionStressfulVigorousValor
Book:I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History
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“If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.”

PeopleIfsNeedsHumansLife IsLibertyPositionBehaviorAdultsPhilosophicalSticksWorthyArguingSpeculationPrivate LifeUnnaturalCondemnationVindicated
Book:Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
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“Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.”

IfsKnowsWellsPastFormLyingRolesCapacityMachinesFunctionCertaintyFeaturesImperfectOrganismsUnpredictableAdaptedQuirkyOptimal
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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“We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.”

IfsNeedsHumansMayLiteratureProcessHuman BeingsSimpleKnownLaborGenreHistorianPeculiarLegendsHeroicRescueTextbooks
Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
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“A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.”

FormLawForceEnvironmentToo MuchTheoryDevelopmentEvolutionBalanceLimitsStructureWesternLocalsAcknowledgeInternalsEmphasisSelectionAdaptationInheritanceConstraintsRepresentingImposingBiologistTheory Of EvolutionExternal Forces
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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“I have often been amused by our vulgar tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of a continuum of possibilities, and break them into dichotomies, assigning one group to one pole and the other to an opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties and intermediate positions and nearly always with moral opprobrium attached to opponents.”

EndsMoralBreakIssuesGroupsPossibilityPositionSolutionsOppositesComplexesExtremesTendenciesOpponentsVulgarSubtletyAmusedContinuumDichotomyAcknowledgment
Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
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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, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.”

IfsHumansLittlesSoulEndsMightCareGrowsResultsConsciousnessProgressRevolutionMessagesRegardPropertyFollowingSeedsTinyStatementsCosmicPredictableKrishnaMantrasPedestalEnd ResultsHaresSmashingTwigsPenetrationAfterthoughtFortuitousHare Krishna
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple.”

DifferentSeemsSimpleSupportAdultsFemaleRootsMalesInternalsCyclesHostConventionalAnatomyIntricateDegeneratesSophisticationParasitesConventional WisdomCrabsSupport SystemsDifferent LifeMyopia
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe - a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space from the farthest planet in our solar system.”

YearsTwoBodyLightHoursSpaceWonderFourPlanetsFitMoonElementsIntellectualIndependentWorthyGiantsAweTwelveTruckExquisiteSolar SystemComplementaryPickupsPickup Trucks
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of would-be tacklers in an oddly zigzagged path toward a goal, not a horse thundering down the flat.”

LongWould BeCoursesGoalTermPathEvolutionHorseObstaclesLong TermFlatsReceiverLegionFreewaysAnalogueLong Term Success
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“Since the universe must contain millions of appropriate planets, consciousness in some form - but not with the paired eyes and limbs, and the brain built of neurons in the only example we know - may evolve frequently. But if only one origin of life in a million ever leads to consciousness, then Martian bacteria most emphatically do not imply Little Green Men.”

IfsKnowsMenMayLittlesEyeFormUniverseBrainConsciousnessMillionsExamplePlanetsBuiltGreenEvolveAppropriateLimbsNeuronsBacteriaOrigin Of LifeMartians
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History
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“The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically "sudden" origins at single bedding planes.”

LongProcessViewsTheoryStandardsOrdinaryClaimsTraditionalRecognitionRadicalPlanesResolveMisunderstoodSequenceEquilibriumLife SpanSudden ChangeBeddingGeological TimeSpeciation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth of natural harmony all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (all structures well designed for a definite purpose in this case). It is, indeed, the vision of foolish Dr. Pangloss, so vividly satirized by Voltaire in Candide the world is not necessarily good, but it is the best we could possibly have.”

WorldWellsLongHas BeensPurposeNaturalVisionCasesCenturyLateLong TimeHarmonyStructureVariousMythFoolishVersionsDrsDefiniteNineteenth CenturyGuiseHyperCandide
Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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“I despair of persuading people to drop the familiar and comforting tactic of dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we might expand the framework of debates by seeking other dichotomies more appropriate than, or simply different from, the conventional divisions. All dichotomies are simplifications, but the rendition of a conflict along differing axes of several orthogonal dichotomies might provide an amplitude of proper intellectual space without forcing us to forgo our most comforting tool of thought.”

PeopleDifferentMightSpaceConflictDespairIntellectualToolsSeekingDebateFamiliarAppropriateDivisionConventionalComfortingTacticsFrameworkAxesSimplificationDichotomyPersuading
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum . (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.”

PeopleKnowsMenNeedsWritingTryingLostSportsEffortIssuesFansMoralityBaseballBallsSticksProfoundExcuseInnocenceParenthoodAdsHittingGentlenessNo ExcusesSuggestingGrown ManProfunditySillinessUnreachableLinkages
Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
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“It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.”

PeopleNeedsWritingHumansWellsHardReasonChallengesMoralIssuesArgumentLet MeStupidityPracticalsEthicalUsualConventionalUnfairEcologyExtinctionFloatsBiologistUnconventionalSnailHumanisticInversePrimacyHuman StupidityEthical Questions
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions.”

KnowsNeedsFirstsRealWould BeEarthOrderAnswersResultsCommonSpeciesCurrentsExperimentsVarietyJudgementMarsRepetitionGreedyAncestry
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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