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Might Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

15 Might quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

All Might quotes Stephen Jay Gould’s page

Stephen Jay Gould blends evolution, history, and philosophy when he writes about might, producing a concise collection that feels both scholarly and accessible. Fifteen statements illustrate his talent for turning complex ideas into clear, thought‑provoking commentary.

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The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it…

Stephen Jay Gould

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In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose…

Stephen Jay Gould

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Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and…

Stephen Jay Gould

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Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent…

Stephen Jay Gould

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No one supposed that dinoflagellates might actively kill fish as an evolved response for their own specific advantage, including a potential nutritional…

Stephen Jay Gould

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Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be…

Stephen Jay Gould

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We build our personalities laboriously and through many years, and we cannot order fundamental changes just because we might value their utility;…

Stephen Jay Gould

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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

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Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working…

Stephen Jay Gould

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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

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I despair of persuading people to drop the familiar and comforting tactic of dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we might expand the framework of…

Stephen Jay Gould

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I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity…

Stephen Jay Gould

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It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in…

Stephen Jay Gould

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I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted…

Stephen Jay Gould

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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

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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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