Home / Quotes / Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

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

Work

Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

This book delves into the lesser-known facets of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work, examining his various inventions and observations. It includes insights into his innovative thinking and the impact of his ideas on the world around him. 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

You May Also Like

“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

Wells Might Form Natural Environment Greater Behavior Function Simplicity Locals Complexity Yield Selection Adaptation Natural Selection Habitat Natural Habitats

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

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

“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.”

Source: I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History

“The great merit of Stephen Gould's account of the disastrous history of phychometrics is that he shifts the argument from a sterile contest between environmentalists and hereditarians and turns it into an argument between those who are impressed with what our biology stops us doing and those who are impressed with what it allows us to do.”

Turns Argument Accounts Merit Biology Impressed Contests Environmentalist

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.”

People Ifs Needs Humans Life Is Liberty Position Behavior Adults Philosophical Sticks Worthy Arguing Speculation Private Life Unnatural Condemnation Vindicated

Book:Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

Source: Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

“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.”

Ifs Knows Wells Past Form Lying Roles Capacity Machines Function Certainty Features Imperfect Organisms Unpredictable Adapted Quirky Optimal

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

“We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.”

Ifs Needs Humans May Literature Process Human Beings Simple Known Labor Genre Historian Peculiar Legends Heroic Rescue Textbooks

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

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

“Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.”

Author:Clifford Geertz

“Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of the bricks, perhaps even the keystone, of truth's temple. Now most scientists of vision hope to foment revolution. We are, therefore, awash in revolutions, most self-proclaimed.”

Self Vision Revolution Tradition Stones Scientist Lays Temples Bricks Keystones

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“An old paleontological in joke proclaims that mammalian evolution is a tale told by teeth mating to produce slightly altered descendant teeth.”

Produce Evolution Jokes Tales Teeth Altered Descendants Mating

Book:Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

Source: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

“A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.”

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