Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles. β¨ Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History.
More Author Quotes
- The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without. β¨ Stephen Jay Gould (1993). Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history, Vintage
- So much of science proceeds by telling stories. β¨ Stephen Jay Gould (1991). Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History, W W Norton & Company Incorporated
- We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universesβone indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum fre β¦ βΆ
- Human life is the result of a glorious evolutionary accident.
- Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not β¦ βΆ
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