Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating, second,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional… — 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
The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If any issue should unite liberals and conservatives, anyone who cares about the integrity of human achievement or respect for human accomplishment,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you're good at come naturally. And since… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human… — 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
As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
[E]volutionists sometimes take as haughty an attitude toward the next level up the conventional ladder of disciplines: the human sciences. They decry… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
What's important is that all human knowledge be made available to all intelligent people who want to learn it. — 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
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