Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Evolution

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  En ciencia, "hecho" sólo puede significar "confirmado hasta tal punto que sería perverso negar un asentimiento provisional". Supongo que las manzanas podrían empezar a subir mañana, pero esa posibilidad no merece el mismo tiempo en las aulas de física.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Media, Ciencia, Manzanas

  Dientes de gallina y dedos de caballo "Evolution as Fact and Theory" (1983)

• La "ciencia de la creación" no ha entrado en los planes de estudio por una razón tan simple y tan básica que a menudo olvidamos mencionarla: porque es falsa, y porque los buenos profesores entienden exactamente por qué es falsa.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Teacher, Simple, Creation Science

• Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Keys, Agents, Evolution

• Estamos aquí porque un extraño grupo de peces tenía una peculiar anatomía de aletas que podían transformarse en patas para criaturas terrestres; porque la Tierra nunca se congeló del todo durante una era glacial; porque una pequeña y tenue especie, surgida en África hace un cuarto de millón de años, ha conseguido, hasta ahora, sobrevivir por las buenas y por las malas. Podemos anhelar una "respuesta superior", pero no existe ninguna.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Ateo, Años, Hielo

• Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Pathways, Events, Alternatives

• La ausencia de pruebas fósiles de etapas intermedias entre las principales transiciones en el diseño orgánico, de hecho nuestra incapacidad, incluso en nuestra imaginación, para construir intermedios funcionales en muchos casos, ha sido un problema persistente y persistente para los relatos gradualistas de la evolución.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Imaginación, diseño, fósiles

• Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Records, Fossils, Evolution

• Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Evolution, Nonsense

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). "Dinosaurio en un pajar: reflexiones sobre historia natural", Harmony

• Why, then, do I continue to claim that creationism isn't science? Simply because these relatively few statements have been tested and conclusively refuted.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Evolution, Creation, Claims

• Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without us.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  World, Evolution, Fit

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.206, W. W. Norton & Company

• Desde que propusimos el equilibrio puntuado para explicar las tendencias, resulta exasperante que los creacionistas nos citen una y otra vez -no sé si por diseño o por estupidez- admitiendo que el registro fósil no incluye formas transicionales. Las formas transicionales suelen faltar a nivel de especie, pero abundan entre grupos mayores.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Stupidity, Design, Religion

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). "Dientes de gallina y dedos de caballo: Further Reflections in Natural History", p.260, W. W. Norton & Company

• The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. It in fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Yield, Theory Of Evolution, Doe

  Stephen Jay Gould (2002). “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”, p.990, Harvard University Press

• Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence of all transitional forms by ignoring those that have been found, and continuing to taunt us with admittedly frequent examples of absence.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Yield, Example, Facts

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). "Dinosaurio en un pajar: reflexiones sobre historia natural", Harmony

• For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Battle, Body, Evolution

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.89, W. W. Norton & Company

• The literal record was not a hopelessly and imperfect fraction of truly insensible gradation within large populations but an accurate reflection of the actual process identified by evolutionists as the chief motor of biological change. The theory of punctuated equilibrium was, in its initial formulation, little more than this insight adumbrated.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reflection, Population, Records

• The myriad valleys could have arisen anywhere on the landscape. The current positions are quite accidental. If we could repeat the experiment, we might obtain no valleys at all, or a completely different system. Yet we now stand at the shore line contemplating the fine spacing of valleys and their even contact with the sea. How easy it is to be misled and to assume that no other landscape could possibly have arisen.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Sea, Different, Valleys

• Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Views, Evolution, Adaptation

• I emphatically do not assert the general 'truth' of this philosophy of punctuational change. Any attempt to support the exclusive validity of such a grandiose notion would border on the nonsensical.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophy, Support, Borders

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.185, W. W. Norton & Company

• History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, History, Causes

• ... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation prevails: biologists have documented a veritable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurable evolution on timescales of years and decades.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Years, Opposites, Facts

• ... each with its own beauty, and each with a story to tell.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Beauty, Stories, Evolution

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.12, W. W. Norton & Company

• Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Tests, Evolution, Dogma

  "Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history".

• Forelimbs of people, porpoises, bats and horses provide the classic example of homology in most textbooks. They look different, and do different things, but are built of the same bones. No engineer, starting from scratch each time, would have built such disparate structures from the same parts.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Horse, Time, People

• Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Air, Apples, Outcomes

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.254, W. W. Norton & Company

• If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are not likely to detect the event of speciation itself. It happens too fast, in too small a group, isolated too far from the ancestral range.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Groups, Events, Looks

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