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Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Paleontologist

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Famous Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

“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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“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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“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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“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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“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 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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“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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“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
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“Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.”

KnowsFormReligionLevelsRecordsGroupsDesignMinesEvolutionSpeciesStupidityTrendsAgain And AgainLackingFossilsEquilibriumAdmittingMiningPaleontologyInfuriatingBiological Evolution
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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