5+ Niles Eldredge Quotes And Sayings

Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.

And it has been the paleontologist- my own breed-who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: ...We paleontologist have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.

The expectations of theory colour perception to such a degree that new notions seldom arise from facts collected under the influence of old pictures of the world. New pictures cast their influence before facts can be seen in a different perspective.

One measure of the greatness of a work is that the characters who play roles in the narrative feel its essential truth. As someone who is proud to have been there during much of the action David Sepkoski describes, I give his description and analysis of the history of paleobiology a five-star rating; to my mind, this actually was the way it was.