In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Stephen Jay Gould quote Humans are here today because our particular line never fractured - never once at any of the billion points that could have erased us from history.
Stephen Jay Gould quote 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 quote Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
Stephen Jay Gould quote The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
Stephen Jay Gould quote No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.
Stephen Jay Gould quote The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould quote 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 quote Biography
US author, 1941-2002
