What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Natural selection may lead to benefits for species, but these 'higher' advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of natural… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that… — 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
My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through… — 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
It's true that the level of scientific knowledge among adults is very low, but that's not because there isn't a natural interest.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I was lucky to wander into evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting and important of all scientific fields. I had never… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a… — 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
Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of… — 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… — 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
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
... 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
Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
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
The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
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
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
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
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
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
Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
![“[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools, not a shiny new space-age machine for penetrating previously inaccessible worlds.” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/aee/stephen-jay-gould-885_age_in-natural-history-great-discovery-often_987347.png)
![“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/i/345/stephen-jay-gould-885_accounts_paleontologists-fossil-experts-have-paid_1303150.jpg)
![“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/i/55c/stephen-jay-gould-885_emmanuel_i-am-particularly-fond-of-emmanuel-mende_1467994.jpg)
![“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/523/stephen-jay-gould-885_accepting_throughout-his-last-half-dozen-books-for_1536434.jpg)
