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 we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity - our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to… — 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
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. — 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
[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
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 am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie… — 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 ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart… — 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 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) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point… — 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 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 of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. I hope that this book can be read with… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share
![“[E]volutionists sometimes take as haughty an attitude toward the next level up the conventional ladder of disciplines: the human sciences. They decry the supposed atheoretical particularism of their anthropological colleagues and argue that all would be well if only the students of humanity…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/6a8/stephen-jay-gould-885_animal_e-volutionists-sometimes-take-as-haughty_1877088.jpg)
![“I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time…” quote by Stephen Jay Gould](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/bc5/stephen-jay-gould-885_acts-of-kindness_i-am-not-asserting-that-humans-are-eithe_3109020.jpg)
