Top George Gaylord Simpson Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

George Gaylord Simpson Biography

George Gaylord Simpson

George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was a US paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution (1944), The meaning of evolution (1949) and The major features of evolution (1953). He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibrium (in Tempo and mode) and dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined the word hypodigm in 1940, and published extensively on the taxonomy of fossil and extant mammals. Simpson was influentially, and incorrectly, opposed to Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift.

Read about George Gaylord Simpson in Wikipedia

Random Authors

George Gaylord Simpson Quotes

A rill in a barnyard and the Grand Canyon represent, in the main, stages of valley erosion that began some millions of years apart.

Apart, Barnyard, Canyon, Erosion, Valleys, Years

Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.

Earth, Expect, Groups, Paleontology, Readily, Samples

The fact -- not theory -- that evolution has occurred and the Darwinian theory as to how it occurred have become so confused in popular opinion that the distinction must be stressed.

Atheism, Become, Confused, Fact, Stressed, Theory

The search for historical laws is, I maintain, mistaken in principle.

Law, Laws, Maintain, Mistake, Principle, Science

Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.

Choose, Evolution, Involve, Mean, Responsibility, Science

The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.

Philosophy, Philosophical, Science, Subconscious, Preconceptions

Human judgment is notoriously fallible and perhaps seldom more so than in facile decisions that a character has no adaptive significance because we do not know the use of it.

Character, Science, Decision, Notoriously, Fallible, Use

Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man.

Men, Important, Sides, System, Structure, Exhibited

Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms.

Divergence, Exemplified, Gradual, Organisms, Splitting, Wells

It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny

Doe, Recapitulation, Repeats, Repeat, Phylogeny, Established

Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.

Animal, Men, Order, Planned, Species

Recognition of this kinship with the rest of the universe is necessary for understanding him, but his essential nature is defined by qualities found nowhere else, not by those he has in common with apes, fishes, trees, fire, or anything other than himself.

Fire, Kinship, Qualities, Tree, Understanding, Universe

To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.

Death, Science, Tree, Ancestors, Monkey

I have a debt, a loyalty to the museum; the best place for me to do what I wanted to do.

Loyalty, Museums, Debt, Place

Species evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.

Moving, Goal, World, Evolve, Set

It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual completely continuous transitional sequences.

Fossils, Gradual, Knows, Levels, Record, Records

The meaning that we are seeking in evolution is its meaning to us, to man. The ethics of evolution must be human ethics. It is one of the many unique qualities of man, the new sort of animal, that he is the only ethical animal. The ethical need and its fulfillment are also products of evolution, but they have been produced in man alone.

Animal, Ethics, Man, Products, Science, Unique

It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.

Checked, Definitions, Evolution, Observation, Saying, Statements

It is obvious that the great majority of humans throughout history have had grossly, even ridiculously, unrealistic concepts of the world. Man is, among many other things, the mistaken animal, the foolish animal. Other species doubtless have much more limited ideas about the world, but what ideas they do have are much less likely to be wrong and are never foolish. White cats do not denigrate black, and dogs do not ask Baal, Jehovah, or other Semitic gods to perform miracles for them.

Cat, Dog, Foolish, Men, Miracles, Things