Stephen Jay Gould vs. Leonardo da Vinci
Read 20 entries attributed to Stephen Jay Gould alongside 20 attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Compare the wording and topic labels.
This page places 20 entries attributed to Stephen Jay Gould alongside 20 attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Each selection is ordered by stored importance score. These are selections from QuoteLineage, not complete accounts of either author's work.
Topic labels present in both displayed selections: knowledge, life, philosophy, art, history, love. Shared labels do not by themselves demonstrate agreement, disagreement, or influence between the authors.
Attributed to Stephen Jay Gould, entry #222466: "Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, …"
Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, entry #119: "Up Lake Como towards Germany is the Chavenna Valley where the River Mera") enters the lake. Here are barren and very high mountains with large rocks ... In these mountains the wat…"
Side-by-Side Comparison
Stephen Jay Gould
1941 – 2002
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, historian of science, and one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, after which he divided his time teaching between there and Harvard.
"Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only fro…"
#leadership"All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. Bu…"
#nature"Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent data . And few intellec…"
#knowledge"If the resident zoologist of Galaxy X had visited the earth 5 million years ago while making his inventory of inhabited planets in the universe, he would sur…"
#creativity"The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic d…"
#life"He confronts a basic tool of the measurers—the statistical technique called factor analysis, developed by the influential English psychologist Charles Spearm…"
#philosophy"Giraffes do use their long necks to browse leaves, at the tops of acacia trees - but such current function, no matter how vital, does not prove that the neck…"
#philosophy"In his anti-Darwinian book... , Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanat…"
#justice"I first met Stephen Jay Gould in the sixth grade in Queens, New York, when we were the only two geeks in the school interested in natural history and particu…"
#writing"Bowing to the reality of harried lives, Rudwick recognizes that not everyone will read every word of the meaty second section; he even explicitly gives us pe…"
#books"f texts are unified by a central logic of argument, then their pictorial illustrations are integral to the ensemble, not pretty little trifles included only …"
#philosophy"The problem may be briefly stated: What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular? I suspect that most people, without training in st…"
#death"The solution, as all thoughtful people recognize, must lie in properly melding the themes of inborn predisposition and shaping through life's experiences. Th…"
#life"Later evolutionary theorists of linear progress had to advance the overtly physical and historical claim that an ancestral lineage of arthropods actually tur…"
#art"I respect Kirkpatrick both for his sponges and for his numinous nummulosphere. It is easy to dismiss a crazy theory with laughter that debars any attempt to …"
#knowledge"The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive"
#history"In this crucial sense, the theory of punctuated equilibrium adopts a very conservative position. The theory asserts no novel claim about modes or mechanisms …"
#philosophy"Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—…"
#love"Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he i…"
#love"But all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence. Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measur…"
#truthLeonardo da Vinci
1452 – 1519
Leonardo da Vinci (1452) was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance — painter, scientist, engineer, mathematician, and writer.
"Up Lake Como towards Germany is the Chavenna Valley where the River Mera") enters the lake. Here are barren and very high mountains with large rocks ... In t…"
#Ethics"Su per lago di Como di ver Lamagnia (Alemagna, cioè Germania) è valle di Ciavenna dove la Mera fiume mette in esso lago. Qui si truova montagni sterili e alt…"
#Science"Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so …"
#Science"3 miglia più in là si trova li edifici della vena del rame e dello argento, presso una terra detta Pra Santo Petro e vene di ferro e cose fantastiche. ( Anci…"
#Science"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or…"
#Aesthetics"The painter strives and competes with nature...There is nothing in all nature without its reason. If you know the reason, you do not need the experience..."
#Epistemology"3 miles further on are the buildings of the vein of copper and silver, near a land called Prato San Pietro and veins of iron and fantastic things. (paper F.573)"
#Science"Fa vini potenti e assai, … e ‘l vino vale el più uno soldo il boccale e la libbra della vitella un soldo e ‘l sale 10 dinari, e ‘l simile il burro, ed è la l…"
#Science"truovasi di miglio i(n) miglio bone osteriee. ( Ancient Italian)"
#Science"As a day well spent makes sleep seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A life well spent is long."
#Human Nature"Look at the grace and sweetness of men and women in the street..."
#Science"Thou, O God, sellest us all benefits, at the cost of our toil...."
#Religion"He makes powerful and very strong wines, … and the wine is worth more than a penny per jug and the pound of veal a penny and the salt 10 denarii, and so is t…"
#Science"To enjoy—to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason."
#love"The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection."
#art"Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man."
#war"Be not false about the past."
#history"There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the w…"
#philosophy"Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it."
#life"Oh! human stupidity, do you not perceive that, though you have been with yourself all your life, you are not yet aware of the thing you possess most of, that…"
#knowledge