Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidedly unpleasant for species caught up in the throes of their power. Stephen Jay Gould More Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould More Quotes From Stephen Jay Gould People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along. Stephen Jay Gould adaptation helping people What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality. Stephen Jay Gould adaptation biology odd With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot. Stephen Jay Gould haughtiness plato people Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion. Stephen Jay Gould expansion evolution process Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival. Stephen Jay Gould perspective mirrors thinking ... each with its own beauty, and each with a story to tell. Stephen Jay Gould evolution stories beauty 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 In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each. Stephen Jay Gould usual struggle two The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould raw-materials essence lying 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 ... 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 opposites facts years 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 support borders philosophy 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. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Stephen Jay Gould design stupidity religion Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny. Stephen Jay Gould clouds integrity life 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 apples outcomes air Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory. Stephen Jay Gould fossils records evolution 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 adaptation evolution views 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 fit evolution world Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Stephen Jay Gould orchids evolution made We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction. Stephen Jay Gould understanding principles thinking
