“Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome.”

— Stephen Jay Gould , book The Panda's Thumb

"Senseless Signs of History", p. 34
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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“Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome.”

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