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Wouldst thou be famed? have those high acts in view, Brave men would act though scandal would ensue.

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Niles Eldredge

The expectations of theory colour perception to such a degree that new notions seldom arise from facts collected under the influence of old pictures of the world. New pictures cast their influence before facts can be seen in a different perspective.

Cast, Expectations, Old, Perception, Perspective, World
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Paleontologists ever since Darwin have been searching (largely in vain) for the sequences of insensibly graded series of fossils that would stand as examples of the sort of wholesale transformation of species that Darwin envisioned as the natural product of the evolutionary process. Few saw any reason to demur - though it is a startling fact that. . . most species remain recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in geological sediments of various ages.

Age, Example, Fossils, Series, Transformation, Vain

Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.

Darwin, Fossils, Gradual, Lineage, Records, Refuted

And it has been the paleontologist- my own breed-who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality:. . . We paleontologist have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.

History, Ideas, Knowing, Reality, Said, Supports

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.

Clothes, Long, Preferred, Simply, Yield

Paleontologist Niles Eldredge, a prominent evolutionist, said: 'The doubt that has infiltrated the previous, smugly confident certitude of evolutionary biology’s last twenty years has inflamed passions. ' He spoke of the 'lack of total agreement even within the warring camps,' and added, 'things really are in an uproar these days. . . Sometimes it seems as though there are as many variations on each [evolutionary] theme as there are individual biologists. '

Agreement, Biologys, Doubt, Evolutionary, Passion, Years
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