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Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.”

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

Work

The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

This volume gathers a series of reflective essays that examine the quirks and complexities of the natural world. The title refers to the peculiar anatomy of flamingos, which feed with their heads upside down, creating an illusion of a smile. The essays delve into topics such as adaptation, evolutionary puzzles, and the intricate relationships between organisms and their environments. The author uses these observations to challenge conventional thinking and highlight the wonder of biological diversity, without relying on technical jargon, making the content accessible to a general audience interested in science and nature. more

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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“I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.”

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Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky

“I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred.”

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Author:John B. S. Haldane

“I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle.”

Source: The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley

“I like people. I like animals, too-whales and quail, dinosaurs and dodos. But I like human beings especially, and I am unhappy that the pool of human germ plasm, which determines the nature of the human race, is deteriorating.”

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Author:Linus Pauling

“I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.”

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Book:Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy

Source: Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy

“If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.”

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Book:The Principles of Biology

Source: The Principles of Biology

“If the germ plasm wants to swim in the ocean, it makes itself a fish; if the germ plasm wants to fly in the air, it makes itself a bird. If it wants to go to Harvard, it makes itself a man. The strangest thing of all is that the germ plasm that we carry around within us has done all those things. There was a time, hundreds of millions of years ago, when it was making fish. Then ... amphibia ... reptiles ... mammals, and now it's making men.”

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Author:George Wald

“If they [enlightened men] take any interest in examining, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of so many nations that have become extinct, they will doubtless take a similar interest in collecting, amidst the darkness which covers the infancy of the globe, the traces of those revolutions which took place anterior to the existence of all nations.”

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Book:Essay on the Theory of the Earth

Source: Essay on the Theory of the Earth

“If we look round the world, there seem to be not above six distinct varieties in the human species, each of which is strongly marked, and speaks the kind seldom to have mixed with any other. But there is nothing in the shape, nothing in the faculties, that shows their coming from different originals; and the varieties of climate, of nourishment, and custom, are sufficient to produce every change.”

Source: A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature

“In the animal world, on the other hand, the process of evolution is characterised by the progressive discrimination of the animal and vegetative functions, and a consequent differentiation of these two great provinces into their separate departments.”

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Book:Principles of Physiological Psychology

Source: Principles of Physiological Psychology