The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
Meaning of the quote
The more important a topic is to us and the more it relates to our desires and necessities, the more likely we are to make mistakes when trying to understand it. This is because our feelings and personal needs can cloud our judgment and make it harder for us to analyze the topic objectively.
About Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science who made significant contributions to the field of evolutionary biology. He is known for his popular science writing and his theory of punctuated equilibrium, which challenged the traditional view of gradual evolutionary change.
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More quotes from Stephen Jay Gould
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
We pass through this world but once.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview – nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
Science is an integral part of culture. It’s not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It’s one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
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.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)
Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.
American biologist and historian of science (1941-2002)