The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Precise adaptation, with each part finely honed to perform a definite function in an optimal way, can only lead to blind alleys,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower"… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably)… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
