“Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways.”

— Stephen Jay Gould, book The Panda's Thumb

Prologue, p. 16
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

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Stephen Jay Gould274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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“Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways.”

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