Biology Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

[Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science.

— Stephen Jay Gould

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

— Stephen Jay Gould

The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.

— Stephen Jay Gould

The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations.

— Stephen Jay Gould

Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion.

— Stephen Jay Gould

History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.

— Stephen Jay Gould

“This new consensus seemed so compelling that Ernst Mayr, the dean of modern Darwinians, opened the ashcan of history for a deposit…

— Stephen Jay Gould

What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This…

— Stephen Jay Gould

We must [it has been arued] go beyond reductionism to a holistic recognition that biology and culture interpenetrate in an inextricable manner.

— Stephen Jay Gould

Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of…

— Stephen Jay Gould

... For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places…

— 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.

— Stephen Jay Gould

“Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel.”

— Stephen Jay Gould

Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history,…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex…

— Stephen Jay Gould

“Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among million; biology took away…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The literal record was not a hopelessly and imperfect fraction of truly insensible gradation within large populations but an accurate reflection of…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

[T]ruly grand and powerful theories [...] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring,…

— Stephen Jay Gould

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

“We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility.…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past,…

— Stephen Jay Gould

All organisms vary, and it's just folk knowledge. You just have to look around a room of people, and everybody knows that…

— Stephen Jay Gould

You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where…

— Stephen Jay Gould

... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now.…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The great merit of Stephen Gould's account of the disastrous history of phychometrics is that he shifts the argument from a sterile…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [...] Worldviews are social constructions, and they…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of 'punctuated equilibria' than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The…

— Stephen Jay Gould