"Of Wasps and WASPs", p. 160
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)
“But all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence. Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measures for a central tendency. Means and medians are the abstractions.”
The Median Isn't the Message (1985)
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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002Related quotes
“Variation is clearly nature's way.”
The Natural Horse (1997)

“There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.”

Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), page 5

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 391.

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.183

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 302-303, quoting from an ESP class session

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 414
Context: Variation and natural selection would also afford a key to a multitude of geological facts otherwise wholly unaccounted for, as, for example, why there is generally an intimate connection between the living animals and plants of each great division of the globe and the extinct fauna and flora of the post-tertiary or tertiary formations of the same region...