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Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating, second, that however bizarre and arcane our world might be, nature remains potentially comprehensible to the human mind.”

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Author

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was a renowned paleontologist, evolutionary theorist, science writer, and academic. He is known for his work in ornithology, paleontology, evolutionary theory, and speciation. Gould's writings and papers have had a profound impact on the scientific community, and he was a long-time contributor to the journal 'Nature'. more

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“Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly and many clouds upon our vision are of our own making: social and cultural biases, psychological preferences, and mental limitations (in universal modes of thought, not just individualized stupidity).”

Social Views Vision Universal Clouds Glasses Stupidity Objectives Psychological Limitation Preference

Book:Full House

Source: Full House

“[T]ruly grand and powerful theories [...] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information. The failure of a particular claim usually records a local error, not the bankruptcy of a central theory. [...] If I mistakenly identify your father's brother as your own dad, you don't become genealogically rootless and created de novo. You still have a father; we just haven't located him properly.”

Ifs Stills Father Powerful Records Havens Information Particular Brother Theory Source Evolution Dad Claims Independent Structure Errors Locals Observation Bankruptcy Unified Inference

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.”

Integrity Cost Eternal Intellectual Bases Add Vigilance Eternal Vigilance Price Of Freedom

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

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“We can now determine, easily and relatively cheaply, the detailed chemical architecture of genes ; and we can trace the products of these genes ( enzymes and proteins ) as they influence the course of embryology . In so doing we have made the astounding discovery that all complex animal phyla - arthropods and vertebrates in particular - have retained, despite their half-billion years of evolutionary independence, an extensive set of common genetic blueprints for building bodies.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain Of Clams

“Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway to consciousness in the form of Homo sapiens or Little Green Men, for example - can be construed as a highway to heaven, but must be viewed as a tortuous track rutted with uncountable obstacles and festooned with innumerable alternative branches. Any reasonably precise repetition of our earthly route on another planet therefore becomes wildly improbable even in a trillion cases.”

“The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests upon an extreme position in a continuum. The Cartesian tradition, formulated explicitly in the seventeenth century, but developed in "folk" and other versions throughout human history no doubt, holds that other animals are little more than unfeeling machines, with only humans enjoying "consciousness," however defined.”

“No one should feel at all offended or threatened by the obvious fact that we are not all born entirely blank, or entirely the same, in our mixture of the broad behavioral propensities defining what we call "temperament".”

Feels Should Facts Born Obvious Broads Blank Threatened Offended Temperament Mixtures Defining Propensity

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“[G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of chemical processes. Genes do not make "novelty seeking" or any other complex and overt behavior. Predisposition via a long chain of complex chemical reactions, mediated through a more complex series of life's circumstances, does not equal identification or even causation.”

Long Doe Process Circumstances Equal Behavior Series Complexes Rate Seeking Reactions Chains Chemicals Genes Novelty Identification Causation Chemical Reactions Enzymes

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Words change their meanings, just as organisms evolve. We would impose an enormous burden on our economy if we insisted on payment in cattle every time we identified a bonus as a pecuniary advantage (from the Latin pecus , or cattle, a verbal fossil from a former commercial reality).”

Ifs Reality Economy Advantage Burden Enormous Former Evolve Latin Organisms Fossils Payment Cattle Bonus

Book:The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Source: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

“The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the "liberal" rhetoric of "equal time." But mistake it not.”

Mistake Enemy Cases Equal Intolerance Rhetoric Fundamentalism Creationism Masquerade

Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History

Source: Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History