"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos"
About this Quote
Gould is doing two things at once: flattering science for its bravery while scolding the audience for needing to be dragged, repeatedly, off the throne. The line lands because it reframes “revolution” not as a triumph of gadgets or equations, but as an ego injury. Copernicus, Darwin, Freud (the usual trio in this genre) aren’t just intellectual milestones; they’re demotions. The cosmos doesn’t revolve around us, nature didn’t design us, even our own minds aren’t fully transparent to us. Gould’s punch is that the shared mechanism of scientific upheaval is psychological: it succeeds by breaking a story people cherish about being special.
The subtext is classic Gould: science is not a steady march toward “truth” but a series of destabilizations that expose how much of what we call knowledge is actually self-regard. By saying the only common feature is “dethronement,” he quietly argues against the myth of a single scientific method or unified scientific narrative. What unifies revolutions is not technique but consequence: each one forces a renegotiation of human meaning.
Context matters. Gould spent his career fighting triumphalist, simplistic accounts of evolution and human progress, and pushing back on biological determinism. This sentence is a preemptive strike against any attempt to recruit science as a new pedestal for human superiority. He’s reminding readers that the most transformative discoveries aren’t comforting. They’re abrasive. They work because they make arrogance untenable, then dare us to build an ethic without cosmic VIP status.
The subtext is classic Gould: science is not a steady march toward “truth” but a series of destabilizations that expose how much of what we call knowledge is actually self-regard. By saying the only common feature is “dethronement,” he quietly argues against the myth of a single scientific method or unified scientific narrative. What unifies revolutions is not technique but consequence: each one forces a renegotiation of human meaning.
Context matters. Gould spent his career fighting triumphalist, simplistic accounts of evolution and human progress, and pushing back on biological determinism. This sentence is a preemptive strike against any attempt to recruit science as a new pedestal for human superiority. He’s reminding readers that the most transformative discoveries aren’t comforting. They’re abrasive. They work because they make arrogance untenable, then dare us to build an ethic without cosmic VIP status.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|
More Quotes by Stephen
Add to List
