Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Certainty

Quotes about: Certainty

• I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Peace, Interesting, People

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.151, W. W. Norton & Company

• 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 do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Ideas, Apples

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Evolution as Fact and Theory", pp. 254 - 55, 1983.

• Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Past, Quirky

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

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