Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought.”

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Create image

Author

Stephen Jay Gould
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

“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
Create image

“Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.”

ShouldHumansLongAtheismDiscoveryLet MeExcitedPositive AtheismTriumphDawnPatrioticEpisodesTechnologicalEmbarrassmentMillenniumIntellectualismCringeAmerican PatrioticJurisdictionLong Sad
Book:I Have Landed
Create image

“The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.”

NeedsYearsIdeasStoriesEarthReligionOrderThreeHalfAtheismEventsProductsThousandMajorsArgumentMiracleClaimsIncludingOpponentsAbandonCollapseBiblicalFloodThousand YearsFossilsRelianceLiteralAssertionGenesisDistortionInvokeOf ContextCitations
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.”

IfsMadeDifferentBeautifulUsedPurposeCommonAtheismFlowerOrdinaryIdealsMachinesFunctionAvailablePositive AtheismCollectionsDevicesEngineersComponentsJuryIntricateRiggedOrchids
Book:The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Create image

“The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).”

FactsThreeEnjoyNaturalSimpleEnvironmentAtheismArgumentClaimsAverageBonesLocalsTraitsOrganismsMechanicSelectionInheritanceVariationAdaptedNatural SelectionOffspringInference
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image