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Stephen Jay Gould:
Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation, which led many authors to call him "America's unofficial evolutionist laureate."
Gould's first degree was taken at Antioch College, Ohio, graduating in 1963. He spent a brief period during this time studying at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, an experience which may have influenced the development of his nascent political awareness [1]. After completing his graduate work at Columbia in 1967 under the guidance of Norman Newell, he was immediately hired by Harvard University where he worked until the end of his life. In 1973 Harvard promoted him to Professor of Geology and Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the institution's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and in 1982 was given the title Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology. In 1983 he was awarded fellowship into the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he later served as president (2000). He also served as president of the Paleontological Society (1985-1986) and the Society for the Study of Evolution (1990-1991). In 1989 Gould was elected into the body of the National Academy of Sciences.
Meer:
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomythat could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a higher answer -- but none exists.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Life magazine, December 1988, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief
... a fortuitous cosmic afterthought.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, describing the evolution of human life on this planet, quoted from Conrad Goeringer, "Stephen Gould Dies, Premier Defender Of Evolution" (May 21, 2002)
History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points. And history includes too much contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of unpredictable antecedent states, rather than immediate determination by timeless laws of nature.
Homo Sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a geologic second ago, because evolutionary theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans arose, rather, 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, from: "The Evolution of Life on Earth," Scientific American (October, 1994): pp. 85-86
... no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, attacking the book The Bell Curve for advancing racially charged theories, in his savage review of the book for The New Yorker, in John Nichols, "Gould Was a Scientist for the People" (The Capital Times: May 30, 2002)
The fundamentalists, by knowing the answers before they start [examining evolution], and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science -- or of any honest intellectual inquiry.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus, 1990, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief
Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, responding to the Kansas School Board's decision, under pressure from Christian funadamentalists, to remove mention of evolution from all public school science curricula, in "Dorothy, it's really Oz," Time Magazine, August 23, 1999
... a local, indigenous, American bizarre-ity.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, describing Christian creationism, quoted from Conrad Goeringer, "Stephen Gould Dies, Premier Defender Of Evolution" (May 21, 2002)
Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, The Skeptical Inquirer, quoted from About.com
The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism," The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 1987-88, p. 186, quoted from About.com
In candid moments, leading creationists will admit that the miraculous character of origin and destruction precludes a scientific understanding. Morris writes (and Judge Overton quotes): "God was there when it happened. We were not there.... Therefore, we are completely limited to what God has seen fit to tell us, and this information is in His written Word."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Creationism: Genesis vs. Geology" Science and Creationism, p. 130 (1984), quoted from Internet Infidels
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" Science and Creationism, p. 118 (1984), quoted from Internet Infidels
The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, responding to the Kansas School Board's decision, under pressure from Christian funadamentalists, to remove mention of evolution from all public school science curricula, in John Nichols, "Gould Was a Scientist for the People" (The Capital Times: May 30, 2002)
The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).
-- Stephen Jay Gould, to which he adds, in a footnote referenced immediately following the first parenthesis: "Two of these three ranked as 'folk wisdom' in Darwin's day and needed no further justification -- variation and inheritance (the mechanism of inheritance remained unknown, but its factuality could scarcely be doubted). Only the principle that all organisms produce more offspring than can possibly survive -- superfecundity, in Darwin's lovely term -- ran counter to popular assumptions about nature's benevolence, and required Darwin's specific defense in the Origin." Quoted from his, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), chapter 1, "Defining and Revising the Structure of Evolutionary Theory," p. 13.
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" Science and Creationism, p. 124 (1984), quoted from Internet Infidels
Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact--which they are very good at. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!
-- Stephen Jay Gould, after the Arkansas creationism trial, quoted by Michael Shermer in the round-up of his April, 2004, debate against Kent Hovind
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, quoted from About.com
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