A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Francis Galton Stephen Jay Gould Pierre Grasse
Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002) Professor of Zoology and Geology at Harvard University Web Amazon GBS QMP AV
In fact, the catastrophists were much more empirically minded than Lyell. The geologic record does seem to record catastrophes: rocks are fractured and contorted; whole faunas are wiped out (see my column of October, 1974). To circumvent this literal appearance, Lyell imposed his imagination upon the evidence. The geologic record, he argued, is extremely imperfect and we must interpolate into it what we can reasonably infer but cannot see. The catastrophists were the hardnosed empiricists of their day, not the blinded theological apologists. Natural History February 1975 pp.16-17 †
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed'. “Evolution’s Erratic Pace” Natural History May 1977 p.14 †
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. “Evolution’s erratic pace” Natural History May 1977 p.14 †
All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record--if only one step in a thousand survives as a fossil, geology will not record continuous change. Although I reject this argument (for reasons discussed in "The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change"), let us grant the traditional escape and ask a different question. Even though we have no direct evidence for smooth transitions, can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms--that is, viable, functioning organisms--between ancestors and descendants in major structural transitions? Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing? The concept of preadaptation provides the conventional answer by permitting us to argue that incipient stages performed different functions. The half jaw worked perfectly well as a series of gill-supporting bones; the half wing may have trapped prey or controlled body temperature. I regard preadaptation as an important, even an indispensable, concept. But a plausible story is not necessarily true. I do not doubt that preadaptation can save gradualism in some cases, but does it permit us to invent a tale of continuity in most or all cases? I submit, although it may only reflect my lack of imagination, that the answer is no. "The Return of Hopeful Monsters" Natural History June 1977 p.24 †
Gradualism, the idea that all change must be smooth, slow, and steady, was never read from the rocks. It was primarily a prejudice of nineteenth-century liberalism facing a world in revolution. But it continues to color our supposedly objective reading of life’s history. Natural History February 1978 p.24 †
Darwin applied a consistency philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature. Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity. Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.13 †
[Darwins's notebooks] include many statements showing that he espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism -- the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. No notion could be more upsetting to the deepest traditions of Western thought than the statement that mind -- however complex and powerful -- is simply a product of brain. Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.24 †
The notebooks prove that, Darwin was interested in philosophy and aware of its implications. He knew that the primary feature distinguishing his theory from all other evolutionary doctrines was its uncompromising philosophical materialism. Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.24 †
In the notebooks Darwin resolutely applied his materialistic theory of evolution to all phenomena of life, including what he termed "the citadel itself" -- the human mind. And if mind has no real existence beyond the brain, can God be anything more than an illusion invented by an illusion? Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.25 †
Facts do not "speak for themselves"; they are read in the light of theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion. Science is a quintessentially human activity, not a mechanized, robotlike accumulation of objective information, leading by laws of logic to inescapable interpretation. Ever Since Darwin (1979) pp.161-162 †
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than information processors. Changes in theory are not simply the derivative results of the new discoveries but the work of creative imagination influenced by contemporary social and political forces. Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.201 †
Before Darwin, we thought that a benevolent God had created us. Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.267 †
Many historians have commented that the most curiously revealing statement in Darwin's autobiography comes close to being an unconscious lie-his claim that he "worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale." For Darwin did no such thing. "The promise of paleobiology as a nomothetic, evolutionary discipline" Paleobiology January 1980 p.97 †
The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution. “Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?” Paleobiology January 1980 p.127 †
The Scopes trial is surrounded by misconceptions, and their exposure provides as good a way as any for recounting the basic story. In the heroic version, Jobn Scopes was persecuted, Darrow rose to Scope's defense and smote the antediluvian Bryan, and the antievolution movement then dwindled or ground to at least a temporary halt. All three parts of this story are false. Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes (1980) p.270
Goldschmidt did not invent the words micro- and macroevolution, but he did popularize them. By microevolution, he referred to changes within local populations and geographic variation -- in short, to all evolutionary events occurring within species. Macroevolution designates the origin of species and higher taxa. The Material Basis of Evolution (1982) p.xx †
Evolutionary biology is a quintessential historical discipline. Science January 20 1984 p.255 †
We cannot understand much of the history of late 19th and early 20th century anthropology, with its plethora of taxonomic names proposed for nearly every scrap of fossil bone, unless we appreciate its obsession with the identification and ranking of races. For many schemes of classification sought to tag the various fossils as ancestors of modern races and to use their relative age and apishness as a criterion for racial superiority. Natural History November 1984 p. 28 †
Sediments between 4 and 10 million years in age are potential guardians of the Holy Grail of human evolution--the period when our lineage began its separate end run to later domination, and a time for which no fossil evidence exists at all. "Empire of the Apes" Natural History May 1987 p.24 † see also: 1
I can understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects -- through opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things. Wonderful Life (1991) p.28 †
Darwin has been vindicated by a rich Precambrian record, all discovered in the past thirty years. Yet the peculiar character of this evidence has not matched Darwin's prediction of a continuous rise in complexity toward Cambrian life, and the problem of the Cambrian explosion has remained as stubborn as ever -- if not more so, since our confusion now rests on knowledge, rather than ignorance about the nature of Precambrian life. Wonderful Life (1991) p.57 †
I regard the two as of equal dignity and limited contact. "The two should not conflict," because science treats factual reality, while religion struggles with human morality. I do not view moral argument as a whit less important than factual investigation. "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge" Scientific American July 1992 †
But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective 'scientific method,' with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology. "In the Mind of the Beholder" Natural History February 1994 p.14 †
Life began three and a half billion years ago, necessarily about as simple as it could be, because life arose spontaneously from the organic compounds in the primeval oceans. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer Interview November 26, 1996 †
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question. Ask anyone to name the most familiar of all evolutionary series and you will almost surely receive, as an answer: horses, of course...Modern horses are not only depleted relative to horses of the past; on a larger scale, all major lineages of the Perissodactyla (the larger mammalian group that includes horses) are pitiful remnants of former copious success. Modern horses, in other words, are failures within a failure -- about the worst possible exemplars of evolutionary progress, whatever such a term might mean. Full House (1996) p. 57-71
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that 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. 2000 Years of Disbelief (1996) †
The opposite truth has been affirmed by innumerable cases of measurable evolution at this minimal scale-but, to be visible at all over so short a span, evolution must be far too rapid (and transient) to serve as the basis for major transformations in geological time. Hence, the “paradox of the visibly irrelevant”--or, if you can see it at all, it’s too fast to matter in the long run. "The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.14 †
I am not one of those rarefied academics who cringes at every journalistic story about science for fear that the work reported might thereby become tainted with popularity. And, in a purely “political” sense, I certainly won’t object -- if major newspapers choose to feature any result of my profession as a lead story especially, if I may be self-serving for a moment, when one of the tales reports my own work! Nonetheless, this degree of public attention for workaday results in my field (however elegantly done) does fill me with wry amusement – if only for the general reason that most of us feel a tickle in the funny bone when we note a gross imbalance between public notoriety and the true novelty or importance of an event, as when Hollywood spinmeisters manage to depict their client’s ninth marriage as the earth’s first example of true love triumphant and permanent.
So thanks, fellas. I’m really glad you reported some ordinary, but particularly well done, studies of small-scale evolution as front-page news. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.18
These shortest-term studies are elegant and important, but they cannot represent the general mode for building patterns in the history of life. The reason strikes most people as deeply paradoxical, even funny-but the argument truly cannot be gainsaid. Evolutionary rates of a moment, as measured for guppies and lizards, are vastly too rapid to represent the general modes of change that build life’s history through geological ages. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.63
These measured changes over years and
decades are too fast by several orders of magnitude to build the history of
life by simple cumulation. Reznick’s guppy rates range from 3,700 to 45,000
darwins (a standard metric for evolution, expressed as change in units of
standard deviation-a measure of variation around the mean value of a trait
in a population-per million years). By contrast, rates for major trends in
the fossil record generally range from 0.1 to 1.0 darwins . Reznick himself
states that “the estimated rates [for guppies] are...four to seven orders of
magnitude greater than those observed in the fossil record” (that is, ten
thousand to ten million times faster!).
If large-scale evolution proceeded by stacking Trinidad guppy rates end to end, any evolutionary trend would be completed in a geological moment, not over the many million years actually observed. “Our face from fish to man,” to cite the title of a famous old account of evolution for popular audiences, would run its course within a single geological formation, not over more than 400 million years, as our fossil record demonstrates. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.64 †
But transient blips an fillips are no less important than major trends in the total “scheme of things.” Both represent evolution operating at a standard and appropriate measure for a particular scale and time -- Trinidadian blips for the smallest and most local moment, faces from fish to human for the largest and most global frame. One scale doesn’t translate into another. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.64You may ignore Maine while studying the sand grain and be properly oblivious of the grain while perusing the single-page map of Maine
But you can love and learn from both scales at the same time. Evolution does not lie patent in a clear pond on Trinidad any more than the universe (pace Mr. Blake) lies revealed in a grain of sand. But how poor would be our understanding – how bland and restricted our sight – if we could not learn to appreciate the rococo details that fill our immediate fields of vision, while forming geology’s irrelevant and invisible jigglings. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.66
Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates on the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings and values -- subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.4
Poor Doubting Thomas, at his crucial and eponymous moment, he acted in the most admirable way for one style of inquiry -- but in the wrong magisterium. He espoused the key principle of science while operating within the different magisterium of faith. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.16
The natural world cannot contradict scripture (for God, as author of both, cannot speak against himself.) So -- and now we come to the key point -- if some contradiction seems to emerge between a well-validated scientific result and a conventional reading of scripture, then we had better reconsider our exegesis, for the natural world does not lie, but words can convey many meanings, some allegorical or metaphorical. (If science clearly indicates an ancient world, then the "days" of creation must represent periods longer than twenty-four hours.) In this crucial sense, the magisteria become separate, and science holds sway over the factual character of the natural world. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.21-2
Annie's cruel death catalyzed all the doubts that Charles's reading of Newman, and his deeper scrutiny of religion had engendered. He had permanently lost all belief in a caring God, and would never again seek solace in religion. He carefully avoided any direct statement in both his public and private writings, so we do not know his inner resolutions. I suspect that he accepted Huxley's dictum about agnosticism as the only intellectually valid position, while privately embracing a strong (and, as he well knew, quite unprovable) suspicion of atheism, galvanized by Annie's senseless death. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.34-5
Theology once occupied this realm of factual inquiry as well. We can hardly expect anyone to withdraw from so much territory without a struggle -- no matter how just and true the claim may be that such an apparent retreat can only strengthen the discipline. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.64
If Pius is arguing that we cannot entertain a theory about derivation of all modern humans from an ancestral population rather than through an ancestral individual (a potential fact) because such an idea would question the doctrine of original sin (a theological construct), then I would declare him out of line for letting the magisterium of religion dictate a conclusion with the magisterium of science. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.78
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized my stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle" -- operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Rocks of Ages (1999) p.84-5
I do get discouraged when some of my colleagues tout their private atheism (their right, of course, and in many ways my own suspicion as well) as a panacea for human progress against a caricature of 'religion,' erected as a straw man for rhetorical purposes... If these colleagues wish to fight superstition, irrationalism, philistinism, ignorance, dogma, and a host of other insults to the human intellect... then God bless them -- but don't call this enemy 'religion.' Rocks of Ages (1999) p.209-210 †
I do not know when the technical and popular prose of science became separated, although I accept the inevitability of such a division as knowledge became increasingly more precise, detailed, and specialized. We have now reached the point where most technical literature not only falls outside the possibility of public comprehension but also (as we would all admit in honest moments) outside our own competence in scientific disciplines far removed from our personal expertise. I trust that we all regard this situation as saddening, even though we accept its necessity. “Take Another Look” Science October 29, 1999 p.899 †
I believe that Owen had, for more than a decade before the Origin appeared, accepted a limited form of evolution -- within archetypes, and along channels preordained by archetypal constraints. He never accepted global transmutation, for his brand of limited evolution could not generate the archetypes themselves...Owen despised the extent and character of Darwin's evolutionism, but not the idea of evolution itself. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002) p.328 †
Anatomy may fluctuate over time, but the last remnants of a species usually look pretty much like the first representatives. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002) p.749 †
Francis Galton Stephen Jay Gould Pierre Grasse
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