The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of Paleontology. Evolutionary trees that adorn our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
'Creation science' has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it:… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Our planet is not fragile at its own timescale and we, pitiful latecomers in the last microsecond of our planetary year, are… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. It in fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
[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 Copy Share Image
The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable. — 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
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 Copy Share Image
I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Why, then, do I continue to claim that creationism isn't science? Simply because these relatively few statements have been tested and conclusively… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense-only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The myriad valleys could have arisen anywhere on the landscape. The current positions are quite accidental. If we could repeat the experiment,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“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 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
![“[T]ruly grand and powerful theories [...] do not and cannot…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/1aa/stephen-jay-gould-885_bankruptcy_t-ruly-grand-and-powerful-theories-do-no_1770112.jpg)
