We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But … - Stephen Jay Gould

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If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia - I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.

Stephen Jay Gould

We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.

Human, Labor, Needs, Peculiar, Science, Simple

Same Author Quotes

If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

Ability, Analogies, Fields, Genius

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

Agents, Decency, Evolution, Keys, Organized, Skepticism

Human life is the result of a glorious evolutionary accident.

Accident, Atheism, Human, Life Is, Religion, Result

Nature is what she is - amoral and persistent.

Amoral, Ecology, Nature, Persistent

Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.

Benefit, Development, Environment, Evolution, Happens, Problem