Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
'Creation science' has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it:… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all impediments to scientific literacy. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of… — 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
I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Why, then, do I continue to claim that creationism isn't science? Simply because these relatively few statements have been tested and conclusively… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 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
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Can I pay any higher tribute to a man [George Gaylord Simpson] than to state that his work both established a profession… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel.” — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity.… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
“This new consensus seemed so compelling that Ernst Mayr, the dean of modern Darwinians, opened the ashcan of history for a deposit… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion — 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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