Frases de Stephen Jay Gould
0 0Stephen Jay Gould
Data de nascimento: 10. Setembro 1941
Data de falecimento: 20. Maio 2002
Stephen Jay Gould foi um paleontólogo e biólogo evolucionista dos Estados Unidos. Foi também um autor importante no que diz respeito à história da ciência. É reconhecido como o mais lido e conhecido divulgador científico da sua geração.[carece de fontes?]
Nascido numa família judia, não praticou nenhuma religião organizada. Ainda que tenha sido educado num meio ideologicamente marcado pelo socialismo, nunca assumiu qualquer militância política. Como escritor, lutou contra a opressão cultural, principalmente contra a pseudociência legitimadora do racismo.[carece de fontes?]
Começou a leccionar como membro da faculdade da Universidade de Harvard, em 1967, onde se tornou professor na cadeira de Alexander Agassiz, de zoologia. Ajudou Niles Eldredge a desenvolver a teoria do equilíbrio pontuado , segundo a qual as mudanças evolucionárias ocorreriam de forma acelerada em períodos relativamente curtos, em populações isoladas, intercalados de períodos mais longos, caracterizados pela estabilidade evolutiva.[carece de fontes?]
Na perspectiva do próprio Gould, esta teoria derrubava um princípio-chave do neodarwinismo - perspectiva não partilhada por grande parte da comunidade dos biólogos evolucionários que a consideram apenas como uma rectificação importante, sem dúvida, mas que não punha em causa o que já era conhecido e defendido como certo pelos cientistas até ao momento.[carece de fontes?]
Citações Stephen Jay Gould
„I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.“
— Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
[https://books.google.com/books?id=-lWtVSZoqWkC&pg=PA776 "Wide hats and narrow minds"] New Scientist 8 March 1979, p. 777. Reprinted in The Panda's Thumb, [https://books.google.com/books?id=z0XY7Rg_lOwC&pg=PA151 p. 151].
„We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.“
— Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
„When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.“
— Stephen Jay Gould
Context: [A]s we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
"The Quack Detector", p. 245
„Our discombobulated lives need to sink some anchors in numerical stability. (I still have not recovered from the rise of a pound of hamburger at the supermarket to more than a buck.)“
— Stephen Jay Gould
"A Time to Laugh", p. 82; originally published as "A Happy Mystery to Ponder: Why So Many Homers?" in The Wall Street Journal (2001-10-10)
„In all my years of teaching with Steve, I have never seen him flustered or at a loss for words—except once. In our course entitled "Thinking About Thinking," he had been presenting a lecture on the randomness of nature and referred to Einstein's famous dictum "I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world." I responded by walking up to the blackboard and writing, "Gould or God?" I then argued that if God does not play dice with the universe, as Einstein said, and if the universe is as random as the throws of honest dice, as Gould says, then there could not be a God. Hence, Gould or God? (Or at the very least, Gould or Einstein?) Then I sat down, leaving it to Steve to answer the challenge. He stood up and looked at the words on the blackboard. He hesitated, gathered his thoughts, and then launched into a defense of God so brilliant that even William Jennings Bryan would have been proud. It was then that I realized what a great lawyer Gould would make. As for God...?“
— Stephen Jay Gould
Alan Dershowitz, [http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/naturalhistory_sjgould.html "This view of Stephen Jay Gould"] Natural History 108 (Nov. 1999): 50–51.
„In this crucial sense, the theory of punctuated equilibrium adopts a very conservative position. The theory asserts no novel claim about modes or mechanisms of speciation; punctuated equilibrium merely takes a standard microevolutionary model and elucidates its expected expression when properly scaled into geological time.“
— Stephen Jay Gould
p. 778
„[W]e do live in a conceptual trough that encourages such yearning for unknown and romanticized greener pastures of other times. The future doesn't seem promising, if only because we can extrapolate some disquieting present trends into further deterioration: pollution, nationalism, environmental destruction, and aluminum bats. Therefore, we tend to take refuge in a rose-colored past […]. I do not doubt the salutary, even the essential, properties of this curiously adaptive human trait, but we must also record the down side. Legends of past golden ages become impediments when we try to negotiate our current dilemma.“
— Stephen Jay Gould
"Shoemaker and Morning Star", pp. 206–207
„We now live, as Earth always has (see my 1996 book Full House), in an Age of Bacteria. These simplest organisms will dominate our planet (if conditions remain hospitable for life at all) until the sun explodes. During our current, and undoubtedly brief, geological moment, they watch with appropriate amusement as we strut and fret our hour upon the stage. For we are, to them, only transient and delectable islands ripe for potential exploitation.“
— Stephen Jay Gould
"War of the Worldviews", p. 352
