“Gaskell could not abide this indecorous version of his beloved linear progress theory. He could not bear to imagine that the grand procession from jellyfish to man, orchestrated by an ever-increasing mass of nervous tissue, once paused in its stately and orderly march toward human consciousness in order to execute a fancy little flip, a clever jig of inversion, just at the sublime and definitive moment of entrance into the vertebral home stretch.”

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

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“Geoffrey also recognized that the opposite orientations of gut and nervous system posed a problem for his claim that insects and vertebrates represent different versions of the same archetypal animal - and he proposed the first account of the inversion theory to resolve this threat to unification. …Geoffroy pursued the… aim of establishing a "unity of type" that could generate both arthropods and vertebrates from the same basic blueprint. …The single grand design includes a gut in the middle and the main nerve cords somewhere on the periphery.”

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

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 326
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“Later evolutionary theorists of linear progress had to advance the overtly physical and historical claim that an ancestral lineage of arthropods actually turned over to become the first vertebrates (for the classical statement of the inversion theory, see William Patten, The Grand Strategy of Evolution, 1920).”

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

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998) "Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327

“The concept of man as mass robot was both an expression of and a powerful motive force in industrialized mass society. It was the basis for behavioural engineering in commercial, economic, political and other advertising and propaganda; the expanding economy of the 'affluent society' could not subsist without such manipulation. Only by manipulating humans ever more into Skinnerian rats, robots buying automata, homeostatically adjusted conformers and opportunists (or, bluntly speaking, into morons and zombies) can this great society follow its progress toward ever increasing gross national product.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 9. General Systems Theory in Psychology and Psychiatry, p. 206

“The growing drama has outgrown such toys
Of simulated stature, face, and speech:
It also peradventure may outgrow
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences
To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Book V.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

“In order to complete the history of the human mind, and attain to a perfect knowledge of its nature and operations, we must contemplate man in all those various situations wherein he has been placed. We must follow him in his progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually advances from the infant state of civil life toward its maturity and decline.”

William Robertson (historian) (1721–1793) Scottish historian, minister of religion, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh

The History of America, Vol. I (1777), Book IV, pp. 281–282

“The enemies of Christ … could not bear his independence; his “Give the emperor that which is the emperor’s” showed a contempt for the affairs of state and its politics—for the moral order—that their self-respect would not let them tolerate.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 53

“What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

“How ironic. In order to avoid the "nutty" theory of inversion, Gaskell invented the even odder notion of stomachs turning into brains with new guts forming below. No wonder then, that later biologists cast a plague on both speculative houses and opted instead for the obvious alternative: arthropods and vertebrates do not share the same anatomical plan at all, but rather represent two separate evolutionary developments of similar complexity from a much simpler common ancestor that grew neither a discrete gut nor a central nerve cord.”

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

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“Imagination should
A reconciler, not a rebel, be,
To teach the heart of man to apprehend
Nature's vicissitudes, and bear his own,
With sympathetic fancy.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Fortunatus the Pessimist (1892), Urania in Act IV, sc. ii; p. 178.

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