Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Study
-
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 profess to study.
→ -
People are storytelling creatures. We like stories that go somewhere, and therefore we like trends - because trends are things that either get better or get worse, so we can either rejoice or lament. But we mistakenly depict many things as trends moving in some direction. We take the "full house" of variation in a system and try to represent it as a single number, when in fact what we should be doing is studying the variation as it expands and contracts. If you look at the history of the variation in all its complexity, then you see there's no trend.
→ -
A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature.
→ -
Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate interests and work in areas of deepest personal meaning.
→
Related Authors
-
Simon Conway Morris University Professor -
Richard Lewontin Evolutionary Biologist -
Ernst Mayr Biologist -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Science writer -
Richard Dawkins Ethologist -
Lynn Margulis Biologist -
Theodosius Dobzhansky Geneticist -
Alfred Russel Wallace Naturalist -
Michael Shermer Writer -
Charles Darwin Naturalist -
Carl Linnaeus Botanist -
E. O. Wilson Biologist -
Daniel Dennett Philosopher -
Ernst Haeckel Philosopher -
Carl Sagan Astronomer -
Oliver Sacks Neurologist -
Thomas Huxley Biologist -
Steven Pinker Psychologist -
Herbert Spencer Philosopher -
