Home / Quotes / Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.”

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Book:Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time

Work

Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time

Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle examines the evolution of ideas about geological time, tracing the development from ancient myths to contemporary scientific theories. It investigates how these ideas have been influenced by cultural, philosophical, and scientific factors, offering a comprehensive look at the complex relationship between myth and metaphor in the study of Earth's past. 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

“I picture several reviewers of my own books as passing a long future lodged between Brutus and Judas in the jaws of Satan.”

Long Book My Own Passing Passings Satan Reviewers Judas Brutus

Book:An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

Source: An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

“As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference.”

People Humans Has Beens Happens Political Cities Ecology Interference Usage

Book:An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

Source: An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

“Memory is a fascinating trickster. Words and images have enormous power and can easily displace actual experience over the years.”

Years Memories Enormous Fascinating Tricksters

Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

Source: Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

“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.”

Source: Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

“Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.”

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries have various fates: Most burn or unravel in the footsteps of time and the fires of later discovery. But their glory lies in their integrity as unified structures of great complexity and broad implication.”

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [...] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.”

Facts Found Social Progress Creation Products Theory Evolution Scientist Construction Interaction Worldview Intertwined Great Scientist Social Construction

Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted for the constraint of a definite "thing" cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw "evolution" or "social organization," not to mention the more mundane "digestion" or "self-interest," without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind.”

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“If a man dies of cancer in fear and despair, then cry for his pain and celebrate his life. The other man, who fought like hell and laughed in the end, but also died, may have had an easier time in his final months, but took his leave with no more humanity.”

Ifs Men May Ends Pain Humanity Dies Hell Cry Months Easier Despair Died Finals Cancer Celebrate Laughed Easier Times

Book:Full House

Source: Full House

“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.”

Knows Needs Might Age Rocks Activity Intellectual Obvious Proof Tyranny Data Decent Hammers Recalcitrant

Book:Life's Grandeur: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin

Source: Life's Grandeur: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin