The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

—Stephen Jay Gould

About Stephen Jay Gould

Portrait of Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould ( GOOLD; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, historian of science, and one of the most widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American...

More quotations from Stephen Jay Gould

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best—and therefore never scrutinize or question.

—Stephen Jay Gould

We pass through this world but once.

—Stephen Jay Gould

It is not every question that deserves an answer.

—Stephen Jay Gould

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

—Stephen Jay Gould

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

—Stephen Jay Gould

learning knowledge certainty science arrogance centrality

More quotations tagged with “science”

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.

—Sir William Bragg

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

—Sir Francis Darwin

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

—Noam Chomsky

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

History

11 Jul 2015 Added