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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.”

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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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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
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“Rifkin's assertions bear no relationship to what I have observed and practiced for 25 years ... Either I am blind or he is wrong - and I think I can show, by analyzing his slipshod scholarship and basic misunderstanding of science, that his world is an invention constructed to validate his own private hopes ... Rifkin shows no understanding of the norms and procedures of science: he displays little comprehension of what science is and how scientists work.”

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Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“It's true that the level of scientific knowledge among adults is very low, but that's not because there isn't a natural interest. I think most kids are fascinated by the natural world. I've often said that if you could quantify the mental power involved in all the dinosaur names correctly known and correctly spelled by 5-year-old kids in America, you could move any mountain on earth.”

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Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.”

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Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
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“Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where they should and must be ... We inhabit a world of human differences and predilections, but the extrapolation of these facts to theories of rigid limits is ideology.”

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Book:The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)
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“Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.”

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Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.”

WorldTryingHumansLongStillsPurposeConsciousnessMorningMinutesMankindMessagesAncientIgnorantClockBuriedMidnightAprilEarly MorningHuman ConsciousnessEcoSave Mother EarthAncient WorldMayflies
Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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“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.”

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Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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“But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology.”

ThinkingWorldWaySelfProblemIndividualSocialScientistMethodMythologyObjectivesRationalLogicalServingStereotypeRobotsBiasedScientific MethodPreconceptionsSelf Serving
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“We pass through this world but once.”

WorldGivingKindnessThis WorldDeedsHelping OthersFeel GoodNeglectReach OutVolunteerGood DeedsDoing GoodEulogyVolunteerismGiving InPassing ThroughQuakerGoodness And KindnessInspirational KindnessGenerosity And KindnessKindness GenerosityHuman KindnessSelf GivingPhilanthropy GivingVolunteerism And ServiceVolunteer AppreciationGoodness In The World
Book:The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)
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