Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Interpretation
Scientific theories evolve over time, but natural phenomena remain constant regardless of our understanding.
This quote by Stephen Jay Gould emphasizes that while scientific theories, like Einstein's theory of gravitation replacing Newton's, may change, the fundamental realities of nature remain unchanged. It illustrates the idea that our understanding of the world can evolve, but the processes of nature, such as gravity and human evolution, occur independently of our theories about them.
In practice
During a science lecture, to illustrate how scientific understanding changes over time.
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.
Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.
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.
For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time.
If your child gets asthma, the fossil fuel industry doesn't pay. Or if there's a natural disaster, the bill is paid by the taxpayer, not the fossil fuel company.
I always think of space-time as being the real substance of space, and the galaxies and the stars just like the foam on the ocean.
True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree — as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.
Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.
There are many who would much prefer that the word 'climate' never be mentioned and that the issue be eliminated from our national conversation.
The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.
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