Quotessence
Home / Authors / Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Paleontologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllEvolutionHumansIfsScienceTheoryWorldNaturalPeopleReligionAtheism

Famous Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

“Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior by themselves. Most genes influence several aspects of anatomy and behavior as they operate through complex interactions with other genes and their products, and with environmental factors both within and outside the developing organism. We fall into a deep error, not just a harmful oversimplification, when we speak of genes "for" particular items of anatomy or behavior.”

FallSpeakInfluenceParticularProductsBehaviorAspectErrorsComplexesEnvironmentalFactorsDevelopingGenesInteractionOrganismsItemsAnatomyOversimplificationInteraction With OthersEnvironmental Factors
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“As a graduate student at Columbia University, I remember the a priori derision of my distinguished stratigraphy professor toward a visiting Australian drifter [a supporter of the theory of continental drift]. Today my own students would dismiss with even more derision anyone who denied the evident truth of continental drift - a prophetic madman is at least amusing; a superannuated fuddy-duddy is merely pitiful.”

TodayRememberMy OwnStudentsTheoryUniversityProfessorsDeniedGraduatesEvidentSupporterDistinguishedAustralianAmusingVisitingMadmenPropheticColumbiaPitifulGraduate StudentsContinentalDerisionDriftersColumbia University
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“There is no gene "for" such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. [...] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts.”

BodyActionLeftBitsInfluenceBuildingSeriesEnvironmentalInternalsGenesSelectionFingernailsMorphologyEnvironmental Influences
Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Create image

“I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills on the businessman's special to Tokyo.”

PeopleIfsBelieveStillsBookLanguageI BelieveSleepSpecialStudentsConceptsIntelligentProfitCompromiseGenreGraduatesBusinessmanPillsCountingRichnessAmbiguitySuitableDistortionStinkSimplificationTokyoGraduate StudentsSeminarsSleeping Pills
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)”

MenDoeAgeEvilPowerfulOur LivesBattleWeightTragedyExtraordinaryDisasterAriseDamageBombsAirplaneTechnologicalPercentagesIncidentsDepravityHavocEvil Man
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.”

HumansReasonProblemFormMy OwnLandSubjectsApproachResearchWestSpeciesIndianRejectsDividesHomo SapiensVariablesClassificationSnailDifferentiation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done by our brains, and essential both to our cultures and to our very survival, are epiphenomena of the computing power of this machine, not genetically grounded Darwinian entities created specifically by natural selection for their current function.”

KnowsHumansDoneCultureCausesNaturalBrainEssentialsSurvivalMachinesFunctionCurrentsEntityGroundedSelectionNatural SelectionHuman BrainComputingGood Causes
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks , one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller , usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?”

IfsNeedsWellsMayChildrenLightAgeSoundMagicTvsGeniusIntellectualDrawsDeserveConcernLonelyOvercomingPressureInstitutionsMajorityCuriosityPassionateFlamesFiftyConformityMuseumsBitesSparksClassroomZealCabinetsTransientEricLureSound BitesFlashing LightsLonely Child
Book:Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history
Create image

“Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.”

ThinkingMindFirstsHumansLittlesArtSelfPhilosophySocialNaturalPoorNovelStruggleRecordsEnvironmentStylePossibilityCreaturesSolutionsConsciousSpeciesComplexesObviousDrawingImprovementExperimentsInventionAriseInteractionAccurateSelf Conscious
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
Create image

“If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.”

IfsWholeCasesTroubleDangerParticularTheoryWeaknessEvidenceWeakWeightAssumingCriticsFoolishTalesPrimariesNailsSupporterSpeculationSanctionsTextbooksIllustration
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History
Create image

“In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless.”

NeedsKindLittlesBookStoriesSchoolCasesHigherSmartHigh SchoolTalesPostsExplanationClassicFairyNecksReachingSpeculationGiraffeFairy Stories
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“No one supposed that dinoflagellates might actively kill fish as an evolved response for their own specific advantage, including a potential nutritional benefit for the algal cells. And yet the dinoflagellates do seem to be killing and eating fishes in a manner suggesting active evolution for this most peculiar reversal.”

SeemsMightEvolutionBenefitsEatingAdvantageResponseKillingIncludingFishesActiveCellsPeculiarSuggestingReversal
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History
Create image

“If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy - Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.”

IfsShouldYearsStillsJoyFiveWillingPlanetsDestructionBillionsAstronomyWitnessOur PlanetUnprecedentedGloriaHistory Of Life
Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Create image

“I was lucky to wander into evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting and important of all scientific fields. I had never heard of it when I started at a rather tender age; I was simply awed by dinosaurs. I thought paleontologists spent their lives digging up bones and putting them together, never venturing beyond the momentous issue of what connects to what. Then I discovered evolutionary theory. Ever since then, the duality of natural history-richness in particularities and potential union in underlying explanation-has propelled me.”

ImportantAgeTogetherNaturalIssuesHeardAtheismFieldsTheoryLuckyExcitingUnionsBonesWanderExplanationRichnessDualityDiggingDinosaursNatural History
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.”

WorldGivingYearsChildrenHas BeensMadeReasonSeemsMightEarthFormOrderUniverseWaterChancePerfectAliveAtheismComfortableGloryAll ThingsClaimsHistoricalEightBillionsHeightCoveredMight Have BeenFascinationHubrisA Perfect WorldAbodeWhy MeContingencyOctopusHappy To Be Alive
Book:An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas
Create image

“Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.”

ShouldHumansLongAtheismDiscoveryLet MeExcitedPositive AtheismTriumphDawnPatrioticEpisodesTechnologicalEmbarrassmentMillenniumIntellectualismCringeAmerican PatrioticJurisdictionLong Sad
Book:I Have Landed
Create image

“The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.”

NeedsYearsIdeasStoriesEarthReligionOrderThreeHalfAtheismEventsProductsThousandMajorsArgumentMiracleClaimsIncludingOpponentsAbandonCollapseBiblicalFloodThousand YearsFossilsRelianceLiteralAssertionGenesisDistortionInvokeOf ContextCitations
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.”

IfsMadeDifferentBeautifulUsedPurposeCommonAtheismFlowerOrdinaryIdealsMachinesFunctionAvailablePositive AtheismCollectionsDevicesEngineersComponentsJuryIntricateRiggedOrchids
Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Create image

“The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).”

FactsThreeEnjoyNaturalSimpleEnvironmentAtheismArgumentClaimsAverageBonesLocalsTraitsOrganismsMechanicSelectionInheritanceVariationAdaptedNatural SelectionOffspringInference
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“Science can't tell us what our life means ethically. It can't tell us what we are meant to do as moral creatures. But, insofar as science can understand what we're made of, and what we're related to, the Darwinian revolution completely revised our ideas about who we are and what we're related to and how long we've been here and why we're on this Earth.”

MeanLongMadeIdeasEarthMoralOur LivesRevolutionCreaturesRelatedWho We AreLife Means
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a principle or progress; it's just a principle of local adaptation. You don't make better creatures in any cosmic sense; you make creatures that are better suited to the changing climates of their local habitats.”

ThreeNaturalPrinciplesEnvironmentProgressProduceCreaturesClimateProductionsLocalsFactorsCosmicSelectionAdaptationInheritanceVariationNatural SelectionHabitat
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image