Stephen Jay GouldDeath is the ultimate enemy and there is nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.
Evolution is an entirely contingent process which, if you rewind the tape and play it back again, it will give out a different tune altogether.
Evolution is haphazard, riddled with contingencies so that if we were to run the tape of life again, nothing would be the same-for gould, not only might humans not exist, but neither organisms with our intelligence nor even organisms as we know them might exist.
Evolution is in no way indicative of increased complexity. In 3.5 billion years, most creatures were and are still bacteria. Only a pitifully limited number of species have proved an exception to this rule.
Evolution is largely something that happens in the wake of catastrophes or geologically rapid events. Otherwise, species are rather stable.
The Human being is not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again.
Plato is responsible for the idea that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.
Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.
A Scientific revolution is the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
Sociobiology is wrongheaded in that many biological traits are not the products of natural selection, favored due to their enhancement of reproduction or survival, but are simply random by-products of other evolutionary developments.
