Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discip…

Stephen Jay Gould
123 citations
Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.
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If I have any insight at all to contribute it is this: find out what you are really good at and stick to it.
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Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die. ✨ Stephen Jay Gould (1990). Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company
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At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation.

Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.

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