Stephen Jay Gould Quote

All great theories are expansive, and all notions so rich in scope and implication are underpinned by visions about the nature of things. You may call these visions "philosophy," or "metaphor," or "organizing principle," but one thing they are surely not — they are not simple inductions from observed facts of the natural world.

Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of, Geological Time, Chapter 1 (p. 9)