“We often think, naïvely, that missing data are the primary impediments to intellectual progress—just find the right facts and all problems will dissipate. But barriers are often deeper and more abstract in thought. We must have access to the right metaphor, not only to the requisite information. Revolutionary thinkers are not, primarily, gatherers of facts, but weavers of new intellectual structures.”

— Stephen Jay Gould, book The Flamingo's Smile

"For Want of a Metaphor", p. 151
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

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Stephen Jay Gould274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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