Speciation Quotes
More Speciation Quotes
Ordinary speciation remains fully adequate to explain the causes and phenomenology of punctuation.
stephen jay gould— p. 1001 (The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002))
Finally, the claim that we equated punctuated equilibrium with saltation makes no sense within the logical structure of our theory so, unless we are fools, how could we ever have asserted such a proposition? Our theory holds, as a defining statement, that ordinary allopatric speciation, unfolding gradually at microevolutionary scales, translates to punctuation in geological time.
stephen jay gould— p. 1009 (The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002))
The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically “sudden” origins at single bedding planes.
stephen jay gould— pp. 2–3 (Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987))
