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Арабские красавицы на фестивале в Дубаи. ТОП-10Арабские красавицы на фестивале в Дубаи. ТОП-10 14 самых удивительных вертикальных садов мира14 самых удивительных вертикальных садов мира Крупнейшие радиационные аварии и катастрофы современностиКрупнейшие радиационные аварии и катастрофы современности
Stephen Gould

A complete theory of evolution...

A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between 'external' forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and 'internal' forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have cal

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

I have often been amused by ou...

I have often been amused by our vulgar tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of a continuum of possibilities, and break them into dichotomies, assigning one group to one pole and the other to an opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties and intermediate positions and nearly always with moral opprobrium attached to opponents.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

I like to summarize what I reg...

I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property th

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

I am particularly fond of [Emm...

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 instructive as a juicy mistake.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

The intricate and different li...

The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Ordinary speciation remains fu...

Ordinary speciation remains fully adequate to explain the causes and phenomenology of punctuation.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Knowledge and wonder are the d...

Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Evolution is an obstacle cours...

Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of would-be tacklers in an oddly zigzagged path toward a goal, not a horse thundering down the flat.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Since the universe must contai...

Since the universe must contain millions of appropriate planets, consciousness in some form - but not with the paired eyes and limbs, and the brain built of neurons in the only example we know - may evolve frequently. But if only one origin of life in a million ever leads to consciousness, then Martian bacteria most emphatically do not imply Little Green Men.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

The theory of punctuated equil...

The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically 'sudden' origins at single bedding planes.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Surely the mitochondrion that ...

Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

If there is any consistent ene...

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Objectivity cannot be equated ...

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Honorable errors do not count ...

Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

...we must be wary of granting...

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Precise adaptation, with each ...

Precise adaptation, with each part finely honed to perform a definite function in an optimal way, can only lead to blind alleys, dead ends, and extinction.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

The world, unfortunately, rare...

The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

If genius has any common denom...

If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Taxonomy (the science of class...

Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes
Stephen Gould

Results rarely specify their c...

Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome.

Stephen Gould 276 quotes

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