Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gouldwas an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996 Gould was also hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, where he divided his time teaching there and at...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth10 September 1941
CountryUnited States of America
In what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible...
The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science -or any honest intellectual inquiry.
What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria.
The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations.
If any issue should unite liberals and conservatives, anyone who cares about the integrity of human achievement or respect for human accomplishment, may we not all pledge to avoid the silly censoring that can lead to a codification of Orwell's Newspeak? Consider John Milton's reasons for why good arguments are often lost: 'For want of words, no doubt, or lack of breath!'
Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die.
People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.
We are storytelling animals, and cannot bear to acknowledge the ordinariness of our daily lives.
Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.
Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion.
Precise adaptation, with each part finely honed to perform a definite function in an optimal way, can only lead to blind alleys, dead ends, and extinction.
...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.
A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.