Siphonophores do not convey the message a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion… — 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
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
Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a… — 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
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
Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly and many clouds upon our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms --… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to place… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did… — 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
