Determinism Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

2 Determinism quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

All Determinism quotes Stephen Jay Gould’s page

Stephen Jay Gould never treated determinism as a closed door; instead he framed it as a dialogue between chance and necessity. Drawing on paleontology and evolutionary theory, he argues that randomness and constraint coexist, inviting readers to rethink the balance of freedom and causal order in science and life.

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Contingency is a thing unto itself, not the titration of determinism by randomness.

Stephen Jay Gould

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Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where they should and must be ... We inhabit a world of human differences and predilections, but the extrapolation…

Stephen Jay Gould

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More by Stephen Jay Gould

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

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History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.

Stephen Jay Gould

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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

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... 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

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Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ...

Stephen Jay Gould

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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

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The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner.

Stephen Jay Gould

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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