“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.)”

—  Stephen Jay Gould , book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 310
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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