Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.
Stephen Jay GouldThe legends of fieldwork locate all important sites deep in inaccessible jungles inhabited by fierce beasts and restless natives, and surrounded by miasmas of putrefaction and swarms of tsetse flies.
Stephen Jay GouldHonorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.
Stephen Jay GouldWhy get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.
Stephen Jay GouldThe most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould