Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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
I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone shown such grace and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
If new species arise very rapidly in small, peripherally isolated local populations, then the great expectation of insensibly graded fossil sequences is… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
Words change their meanings, just as organisms evolve. We would impose an enormous burden on our economy if we insisted on payment… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are… — 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
![“I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a short episode expressing one of the grand false starts in the history of natural science and nothing can be quite so informative and…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/55c/stephen-jay-gould-885_emmanuel_i-am-particularly-fond-of-emmanuel-mende_1467994.jpg)
![“Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/345/stephen-jay-gould-885_accounts_paleontologists-fossil-experts-have-paid_1303150.jpg)
