Gaskell could not abide this indecorous version of his beloved linear progress theory. He could not bear to imagine that the grand procession from je… - Stephen Jay Gould
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Gaskell could not abide this indecorous version of his beloved linear progress theory. He could not bear to imagine that the grand procession from jellyfish to man, orchestrated by an ever-increasing mass of nervous tissue, once paused in its stately and orderly march toward human consciousness in order to execute a fancy little flip, a clever jig of inversion, just at the sublime and definitive moment of entrance into the vertebral home stretch.
Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American geologist, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular-science author, who spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Lawrence Lipke (Public domain / CC0)
The world is a complex place. In our struggles to simplify and understand, we often identify some bugbear and then make it responsible for all evils.
So much of science proceeds by telling stories.
Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?
