…and this is a 
When I was growing up, I had no introduction to evolutionary theory. Sure, I assumed it was true, and I went through the usual long phase of dinosaur fandom, but I was never taught anything at all about evolution throughout my grade school education, and what little I did know was largely stamp-collecting. That all changed, though, when I went off to college.
I can't credit the schools I went to, unfortunately: most of my undergraduate education (with a few wonderful exceptions) was the usual mega-survey course, where the instructor stuck a funnel in our heads and poured in facts for a term — so more stamp-collecting. What happened to me, though, was that I was struck by two thunderbolts at almost the same time. The hot science book that was published during my freshman year was E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology, and I bought it and devoured it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was more buckets of facts, but in this case, these facts were deployed to illuminate an overarching idea about how the world works…and I found it wonderful.
The second thunderbolt was Stephen Jay Gould. He was doing the same thing, promoting ideas powerfully with evidence and rhetoric, and he was far easier to read than Wilson, and communicated even more clearly. It was also wonderful.
Of course, if you know anything about the intellectual landscape of the 1970s, you know that I had acquired as two scientific god-parents two warring camps who were hellbent against one another in a period of angry evolutionary ferment. I am the product of a broken home! It was especially tragic, because in my naiveté, I thought most of the conflict was a waste, that each side had an important perspective, and that the right answer was an appreciation of the power of selection and an understanding of the other modes of change operating over history.
I've long been interested in the battle royale that went on in that period — it's like a child's morbid dwelling on the scab of an ugly parental divorce — and in particular with that central figure, Steve Gould. Last week I was sent a copy of a book by David F. Prindle, Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), so of course I had to read it.
This is going to be a mixed review. Overall, it's a good book and brings together some important insights, but at the same time, it's a book about an author I've read obsessively for more than 30 years now, so I'm also going to pick on many of the details. Don't let my personal investment in the subject deter you from reading Prindle's book!
There are some key points that Prindle makes that are absolutely central to understanding Gould. He was most definitely a political man and he was strongly leftist (but not, as the book makes clear, a Marxist…a baseless claim that was often trundled out to slam him, ineffectively — since he also wouldn't have regarded it as an insult). Gould was an advocate of human equality and social justice, and you can't read him without seeing that ideological agenda dripping from every page. Prindle puts that front and center, and makes it the lens that we have to view Gould through, and I think that is entirely appropriate. It also clarifies those ugly battles: what stirred the vehemence was not just the scientific interpretation of the evidence, but an awareness of the political implications of those ideas. Gould was not at all averse to waving the banner of his political cause while charging into the fray with his scientific colleagues and critics.
Another powerful attribute that Gould had was that he made science passionate and personal — he was the popularizer of science who had a direct shunt from his heart to his pen. No science writer has equalled him in that, and it was central to his appeal. He made science human and important.
Now none of those properties — politics, passion, and personality — are necessarily regarded as virtues in the scientific community. We're supposed to be dispassionate, aloof, objective, non-partisan, and there's a prejudice that you're a lesser man (yeah, it's also a male bias) if you step away from the illusion of impartiality. Prindle treads the difficult line well, showing both how Gould used his political position as a strength, but also how it was a weakness, especially since it provoked such animosity in his critics. Of course, he also explains that the demeanor of objectivity by his intellectual opponents was also often a rhetorical pose, just as political as Gould's overt position.
So I think it's a good and accurate book that examines Gould from a political perspective, and especially in his case, that is a very useful viewing angle. It's not a hagiography, either, but an honest assessment of Gould's contributions to the history and politics of science, and there are a few places where it is uncomfortably critical of the man…and I can't really argue against Prindle's judgment in many of those cases.
The book also has some weaknesses, though. One is a contrast: Gould is an engagingly open writer who tells us not only what he thinks, but how he came to think that way, and that is tellingly illustrated at many points in the book. But who is David F. Prindle? The author does not show through at any point at all, and often the perspective is of an outsider looking in, making notes of the antics of those belligerently evocative scientists, and pretending to be completely uninvolved. We know you're not, Dr Prindle! Take a lesson from your subject!
That isolation from the subject sometimes weakens his analysis. For instance, Prindle wonders at some length about the absence of critiques of J. Phillipe Rushton from the Gould corpus, and seems to think it odd that a such a scientist should be neglected. It didn't seem unusual at all to me, but then I share Gould's politics: he didn't bother with Rushton because Rushton is a racist crank. Simple. Remember, this is a book about the importance of Gould's politics, and those politics would have informed such a dismissal.
Prindle is also not a biologist, but a professor of government. Generally he does a good job of summarizing Gould's views on contingency, and pluralism, and punctuated equilibrium, etc., but I think that's because he has steeped himself deeply on Gould's own writings on those subjects. When he walks into the broader domain of biology, though, there are some places where he missteps. For instance, he actually concedes some plausibility to the creationist arguments from the improbability of successive useful mutations. Prindle is most definitely not on the creationist side, but still — that has always been one of their weaker arguments, frequently refuted. In one place, he even cites a counter-claim by Ann Coulter, which was jarring — does anyone take Coulter seriously? It felt very much out of place.
As I said, this is not hagiography, so I was also surprised to see one criticism that should have been made that was not. Gould's reputation rested on his strength as a writer, and when he was on, he was very, very good. Personally, I think that if we extracted the best of his essays, he was the best science writer of the 20th century. Unfortunately, he also had a weakness: an extravagant prolixity that at its worst, made him almost unreadable. If we compare him to Dawkins, for example, Dawkins' strength as a writer has always been his clarity — with Dawkins, you are always on a bullet train straight to the heart of his point. Gould was more the slow but elegant train that took long detours through the scenery, occasionally stopping to give the passengers time to take in a museum or the opera. It was wonderful when it worked, but sometimes, especially in his later years as he tried to pack more and more stops on the itinerary, it got in the way of his message. His last book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, is particularly afflicted with the excesses of his style, which means it is less well read than it deserves.
There is another, more serious omission from Prindle's book, one that perhaps is a product of some of my biases. Where is development? Gould was not a developmental biologist by any means, but one of his frequent messages, noted in the book, is that evolution is driven by much more than natural selection. And one thread that came up frequently (and admittedly, I am perhaps sensitive to it) was the role of developmental processes in shaping evolution. It was a long-term interest of Gould's, as well, and can be traced back to his first book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Prindle mentions it briefly in a discussion of Gould's appreciation of formalism — the idea that form imposes constraints on and enables particular opportunities for evolution, steering lineages into general ranges of potential — but otherwise, it's a large and neglected gap in the Gouldian weltanschauung. I missed it.
Furthermore, Prindle notes that it was an important part of his final synthesis. He even quotes from Structure:
These discoveries [of homologous processes in diverse forms] had caused a "general shift in viewpoint—from a preference for atomic adaptationism…to a recognition that homologous developmental pathways…strongly shape current possibilities 'from the inside'." Therefore, evolutionary biologists should now recognize that "these internal constraints can surely claim equal weight with natural selection in any full account of the causes of any particular evolutionary change."
It's right there. In other parts of the book, Prindle points out that Gould, despite his reputation for railing against panadaptationist explanation, often seems to be quite content to accept the principles of selection and even discusses the importance of selection. Prindle suggests that this is because he has no better explanation than selection, rather than the more pragmatic reason that as a scientist, he knew that selection was an irrefutable phenomenon, so of course he acknowledged it. It is important. However, at the same time, Gould wasn't just conceding selection for lack of an alternative, he was a radical pluralist who had many other processes, including development and certainly including selection, to which he accorded considerable importance.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Davis | June 15, 2009 11:49 AM
Steve Gould has been a hero to this non-scientist for a long time. I seem to remember his writing somewhere that his father was a Marxist.
I was taught natural selection in high school biology class, circa 1965.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 15, 2009 11:51 AM
Yes, Gould's father was a Marxist, and he acknowledged that several times in his writings. It's also clear, though, that Steve Gould himself was not.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 15, 2009 11:52 AM
NOMA's a sad little footnote on Gould's usually good writings on science.
Why we're supposed to give up on insisting on good data for really important personal beliefs--ones that may cause you to have a meaningful life or a futile life--I cannot fathom.
As a legal fiction, it's not so bad. Telling people that NOMA is an intelligent way to think is inappropriate.
The good thing is that it seems to have backfired significantly, since a lot of people thought it sounded so lame.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 15, 2009 11:55 AM
I find Gould to be a better essay writer than a writer of full length books., probably because in an essay he has to cut the point a whole lot quicker.
Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 15, 2009 11:57 AM
What does it matter if Rushton is a racist, as long as we only evaluate his science? Darwin was a racist (like most of his time), and that is continually excused as unimportant. That Rushton is racist is not enough to ignore his science (though I'm not saying whether his science is sound or not).
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 15, 2009 12:01 PM
It's clear that he was not? This is what I found with a very quick Google search:
Of course one would need to ask what constitutes "a Marxist," whether it's a clear allegiance to that political philosophy, or if one's work tends to reflect Marxism, or something else. On the less rigorous definitions, it does seem one can argue for his being a Marxist.
Marxism is not, of course, "evil" (often thought so largely because it is atheistic), though I can't say that it reflects political or economic reality in a reasonable manner.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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June 15, 2009 12:01 PM
*Sigh*
And once again we're tripping over the indelible etchings of McCarthyism, where an individual's life's work can be dismissed with the merest whisper of "Yeah, by s/he was a Marxist, wasn't she?"
At least under the caste system of India pariah status is conferred by birth rather than any old wag with an axe to grind.
Posted by: Richard Harris
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June 15, 2009 12:01 PM
...recognition that homologous developmental pathways…strongly shape current possibilities 'from the inside'." Therefore, evolutionary biologists should now recognize that "these internal constraints can surely claim equal weight with natural selection in any full account of the causes of any particular evolutionary change."
Surely, 'these internal constraints' are just limitations on what would otherwise be available to natural selection? They are not an external (to the organism) sorting process on a par with natural selection.
Posted by: molliebatmit | June 15, 2009 12:04 PM
Gould was also a major reason I got into biology -- I read all of his books after my sophomore year in high school, when I was still a fundie and a creationist. And now I'm an atheist developmental biology grad student!
I think his writing instills in the reader a great curiosity about evolution. At the same time a major theme of his work is to be cautious about blindly accepting results that mesh well with your cultural sensibilities. I think that gut check, which I picked up from his writing, is tremendously useful to me as a scientist.
Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 15, 2009 12:04 PM
Paul Krugman on Gould:
Blog and source.
Posted by: mk | June 15, 2009 12:07 PM
Darwin was a rcist? Far out! That's news to me. Could you point out some of his racist writings?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 15, 2009 12:11 PM
Great review PZ Might have to go pick it up. My reading of Gould is limited but he was one of my Grandfather's favorites so might as well dive in.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 15, 2009 12:14 PM
Another source:
The last paragraph is overwrought, since one could be an "agnostic" and a Marxist, I am sure.
Of course, not being a communist needn't be the same as not being a Marxist.
What it looks like to me is that Gould was no Marxist in the way that his father was (so, not politically devoted to it), but seemed to be fairly Marxist in his thinking, moving him toward the seemingly "dialectical" approach to speciation known as "punctuated equilibrium." For sure, "punctuated equilibrium" isn't too much like "dialectical materialism," but he seems to associate the two ideas.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 15, 2009 12:14 PM
Ugh. Krugman is, I hope, a better economist than biologist.
Posted by: SteveM
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June 15, 2009 12:15 PM
Maybe you didn't notice that PZ was explaining why Gould does not discuss Rushton, not justifying Gould for doing so.
Posted by: Victor
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June 15, 2009 12:17 PM
Creation.com calling a scientist biased ... wow. Evidently they've removed all the mirrors in their offices.
Posted by: Karl Steel | June 15, 2009 12:17 PM
e freely admitted that his punctuated equilibrium theory, for which he is most famous, attracted him because of his knowledge of Hegel and Marx.
Whereas other belief systems know how to stay put and never have any influence on other analytical processes....?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 15, 2009 12:17 PM
Boy you git over there an poison up that well.
Posted by: fyreflye | June 15, 2009 12:19 PM
There are currently no reader reviews of this book on Amazon. PZ really should transfer an edited version of this outstanding review to the Amazon site.
Posted by: jellay
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June 15, 2009 12:22 PM
Gould's a very important writer for me. The Panda's Thumb not only sparked my interest in biology, but also taught me the principles of evolution that I still remember well, which isn't something I can say for my high school biology.
Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 15, 2009 12:26 PM
mk @11: Darwin viewed (like every other British gentleman in his time) blacks and Australian aborigines as intellectually inferior. Or something to that effect.
I'm not saying this is of any import in regard to his theory. In fact that is what I'm trying to say about Rushton, too (though I am not willing to make any statements on the validity of Rushton's analyses).
Posted by: CMFlyer
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June 15, 2009 12:29 PM
hagiography: a glorifying biography of an idol or saint.
NOMA: non-overlapping magesteria.
Just saving folks some time...
Posted by: dwhisper | June 15, 2009 12:33 PM
Interesting stuff. Sadly, my thunderbolt moments and real interest in the topics talked about are all fairly recent, so I nevertouched Gould. But I would love some suggestions on reading to jump in at.
Posted by: mk | June 15, 2009 12:39 PM
@Bjorn...
Assuming for this discussion that Darwin felt as you say... there's a difference between a man of the 19th century who displays a certain ignorance with regards to race and a man of the late twentieth century who is indeed a racist. You wouldn't say Darwin and Rushton are cut from the same cloth would you?
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 15, 2009 12:40 PM
Gould's "Ever Since Darwin" (the first book of his essays from Natural History) reignited my dormant interest in evolutionary biology and sparked a new interest in the history of science - too late to send me in either direction professionally, as I was already a (struggling) postgrad in AI - but coming across his work has influenced everything I've done and thought since. Unfortunately his later popular work (all I'm qualified to judge) went downhill, and NOMA is an embarrassing piece of nonsense, but at his best, he was a brilliant populariser as well as a significant scientific innovator. I don't think I'll be reading the biography, though - not one of my favourite literary forms, so I'd have to be convinced it's exceptionally good to spend the time on it - and from PZ's account, it's just OK.
Bjørn Østman - Rushton's not just a racist, but a racist crank - not that you can really find any other kind these days. In Darwin's day you could be a racist (by our standards) and a good human scientist, while now, holding racist beliefs requires too much distortion of the evidence. Of course, you could be a good astronomer (say) and a racist, just as theists can be good scientists - the irrationality has to be at sufficient distance from the scientific expertise.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | June 15, 2009 12:41 PM
In the context of his time Darwin was quite an anti-racist. He befriended Africans in England. He treated dark-skinned aboriginals as fellow humans (see the stories of "Jeremy Button"). Darwin thought the intelligence and morals of Africans to be on a par with the most noble humans (see his description of slave rebels in Brazil, comparing them to Roman generals). He stood staunchly against slavery, and especially against slavery based on race as was most often practiced in his time. He urged his family to devote time and fortune to the eradication of slavery in the British Empire, and he was happy when they did. Darwin was well aware that evolution meant humans are all brothers under the skin, and that it knocked out any possible scientific basis for racism.
See deeper explanations here, and here.
It's not that the claims of Darwin's racism are ignored so much as that the claims are dramatically in error.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 15, 2009 12:42 PM
Slate has a few quotes on Gould's leftism, including this one:
Then again, while Nietzsche didn't usually care much about science, he'd as readily look at the social roots of scientific ideas as Engels would. Yet I don't think that Gould shows much evidence of reading Nietzsche, so, on that score, it's still Marx/Engels.
The Socialist Worker Online:
And on that subject, I'm far more with Nietzsche, dialecticism is almost wholly nonsense.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 15, 2009 12:48 PM
mk, I already remarked on that difference. (Parantheses are not to be skipped.)
Anyway, the point was only that in turns of science, it does not matter than the scientists is a racist. Or religious. Or creationist. Oh wait, that last one does matter. You get the drift.
Posted by: Darby | June 15, 2009 12:50 PM
I got the impression that as Gould got older, editors were less and less likely to mess with his writing - the same problems cited for his later book were evident in his Natural History columns. I'm tempted to call it the "Heinlein Effect," but the candidate list for namesake is pretty long.
Posted by: GBJ
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June 15, 2009 12:53 PM
I had the good luck to be smacked upside the head in grad school by E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology in 1975 and Dawkin's The Selfish Gene the next year. Those two books, more than any other, altered my world view. I read Stephen Jay Gould in the years after and found his writing brilliant, but nothing he wrote ever had the same worldview-altering impact for me. I prefer the bullet-train versions.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 15, 2009 12:54 PM
As I understand it, he began rejecting people editing his work at all.
Posted by: mk | June 15, 2009 12:57 PM
@Bjorn...
You stated that Darwin was a racist. You made no distinction. Saying all English Gents were racist as well is not making a distinction.
Stating that Darwin was a racist, like Rushton, is wrongheaded in my opinion.
Posted by: alias Ernest Major | June 15, 2009 12:58 PM
If we compare him to Dawkins, for example, Dawkins' strength as a writer has always been his clarity — with Dawkins, you are always on a bullet train straight to the heart of his point.
I don't find it a problem in Dawkins' writing, but it has been said that the Gods cursed him with a gift for metaphor - he has had problems with people unable to recognise his metaphors for what they are.
Posted by: Helioprogenus | June 15, 2009 1:01 PM
Where's the mention of Gould's haphazard conceit of non-overlapping majestria? Along with the Wilson battle, there was considerable debate with Dawkins regarding the Gould's assertion that religion can be reconcilable with science, because they are separate and distinct domains. Whereas a better assumption is that they are incompatible with each other. Why give extra fodder to religious cranks? Yes, Gould was a populist and perhaps not as much of a polemicist as Dawkins, but Dawkins isn't exactly an intentional polemicist as perhaps someone like Hitchens. Besides, Dawkins didn't sugar coat anything or walk around eggshells to explain complex ideas that may not sit well with most believers.
Posted by: littlejohn | June 15, 2009 1:03 PM
I discovered Gould a little later in like, but acquired everything he wrote with the exception of that vault-size tome he wrote shortly before his death. I have nothing against big books, I just assume that it is over my head.
My late father, a sci-fi fan, introduced me to Asimov. I quickly discovered his non-fiction was better than the robot stuff.
In college, my philosophy teacher introduced me to A.J. Ayers and Ayers led me to Bertrand Russell. I was never a religious believer, but after that I was comfortable calling myself an atheist.
By the way, my generally crummy education (in science, at least) taught me little about biology, but I've been trying to make up for that by reading Dawkins.
I wonder how many other people my age (I'm 54) followed a similar path. I have degrees in journalism and philosophy, but now find I know as much about science as most engineering grads. All self-taught, much of it in middle age.
If only my father had been a sci buff, not a fi buff, I might have a job.
Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 15, 2009 1:04 PM
Okay, Darwin was not a racist.
Posted by: Pareidolius | June 15, 2009 1:05 PM
Is it ironic to use the word "prolixity" to elucidate the linguistic excesses of another? I do hope so, since I plan on adding this splendid word to my already obnoxious lexicon. Take that June Casagrande!
Posted by: peter irons | June 15, 2009 1:06 PM
Steve Gould was my closest friend from our undergraduate days at Antioch College in the early '60s until his death in 2002. We lived just a few blocks apart in Cambridge from '69 until I moved to San Diego in '82. During my Cambridge years, Steve and I had a monthly bowling match, followed by beers at a North Cambridge tavern, at which we discussed politics at great length. One thing I know about Steve is that he was in fact a Marxist, but not in the "vulgar" sense; I'd say he (like me) was a democratic socialist (of the Norman Thomas variety), but his politics were based on classical Marxism. (His father had been a member of the CP, until the revelations about Stalinism, and Steve was a "red diaper" baby through his high-school years. So how did this background impact his work and thinking on evolution? To the extent, I think, that both classical Marxism and evolutionary thought are based on the foundations of naturalism and materialism. One need not, of course, be a Marxist to accept materialism or evolution, but their philisophical roots are similar. I haven't read Prindle's book, but I'll certainly do that to see if the Steve Gould he portrays is the one I knew so well.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 15, 2009 1:07 PM
It might be, but not because you lack the intellect to understand it. I have read it, and there are good ideas in it trying to get out. The sad truth is that those ideas are smothered under a writing style that makes it a chore trying to understand what they are.
Posted by: Divalent | June 15, 2009 1:08 PM
"... two warring camps who were hellbent against one another ..."
This is a bit misleading.
Gould aggressively attacked Wilson and his sociobiology ideas (and his Marxist "leanings" are relevant to that issue). Wilson's actions were defensive only.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | June 15, 2009 1:14 PM
Rev, I was in Appleton, Wisconsin, this week. Pickin' up the younger one at the end of the semester at Lawrence U.
Joe McCarthy's grave showed no signs of disturbance. He's still seriously dead, still six feet under.
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 15, 2009 1:17 PM
Divalent,
Well, you can see the much if not all of sociobiology (and its successor, evolutionary psychology) as a kind of aggressive "greedy reductionism" aimed at reducing social science to biology, and often deployed in support of conservative ideologies - just-so stories justifying male privilege and "free-market" capitalism.
Posted by: Sherry
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June 15, 2009 1:21 PM
My atheist grandfather, who's formal education ended at 14yo,
was a big fan of science and evolution.
He made much more of an impression on me with his hybrid roses and explanations of why turtles breeds varied so much. I'll never forget being about 5yo, having a big ole' snapping turtle in the back yard, (to butcher and eat) and grandpa had a tiny red eared slider and we compared them -- their shells, their mouths, their feet.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 15, 2009 1:21 PM
I don't think either side can be excused. Some of Maynard Smith's remarks about Gould, for instance, were downright vicious.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 15, 2009 1:21 PM
Whew. I can only cringe at the thought of what a Zombie McCarthy would be like.
Posted by: clausentum
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June 15, 2009 1:22 PM
PZ is correct about the prolixity: he could be quite a windbag, and his writing is also sullied by pretentiousness and vanity. Acknowledging that, though, strangely enough I found his "
popularising" works absorbing. Then again, I love history of science.
Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 15, 2009 1:25 PM
Whew. I can only cringe at the thought of what a Zombie McCarthy would be like.
It could not be as bad as Orac's Zombie Hitler.
Posted by: Zembla | June 15, 2009 1:27 PM
I'd be interested in hearing more from Myers about Rushton.
Posted by: xebecs | June 15, 2009 1:30 PM
peter irons: Thank you for posting. I'm sure that many here would appreciate additional information and/or anecdotes, if you feel comfortable posting them here.
Gould was a favorite of mine. All of the best seem to die young: Gould, Douglas Adams, Paul Wellstone. So many more, but it always takes me days to dredge up all the names...
Posted by: uncle frogy | June 15, 2009 1:35 PM
unfortunately I have never read any of his books I might have read some of his essays but I have heard his voice in interviews on documentaries. I can not read even any quotes without hearing his voice. His spoken voice conveyed his humanity and his humor his skepticism and his honesty.
Posted by: Colugo | June 15, 2009 1:36 PM
"often deployed in support of conservative ideologies - just-so stories justifying male privilege and "free-market" capitalism."
That is bunk. (For the most part.) Tell that last one to Robert Trivers. I won't cite a laundry list of names and theories that counteract that statement. OK, James Chisholm is another.
Gould himself praised Hamilton at first ('cleverly kind an animal').
Evolutionary ecology (optimal foraging, life history, sociobiology) in fact is rooted in 60s application of economics and operations research principles to ecology and behavior - which even Lewontin was involved in - but many balked at its application to human beings. It became tied to levels of selection, namely genic selection, with Williams and Hamilton. But whether one favors genic, individual, group or multilevel, Williams and others introduced a higher level of rigor in the analysis.
True, there were crudely simplistic alleged universals, especially about sex, that came in asserted in the 'paper and pencil test of undergrads' ev psych era.
Far worse is the infestation of HBD - unfortunately often code for scientific racism - in human evolutionary biology. Resisting that infection will be a challenge.
Smart human evolutionary behavioral sciences includes plasticity in relation to ecology (see evolutionary anthropology) and the role of culture (see dual inheritance).
The younger generations who read both Gould and other 'pluralists' as well as 'sociobiologists' tend to favor an integrated approach rather than the polemics of the 70s.
Posted by: Richard Dawkins | June 15, 2009 1:40 PM
PZ Myers wrote:-
The passage from Maynard Smith to which PZ is doubtless referring is the following, from his review, in the NYRB, of Dennett's masterly book, Darwin's Dangerous IdeaPosted by: Heaventree
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June 15, 2009 1:47 PM
A wonderfully fair and detailed review, PZ. Just another reason that Pharyngula is my first stop just about every morning.
Posted by: Divalent | June 15, 2009 1:53 PM
"...you can see the much if not all of sociobiology (and its successor, evolutionary psychology) as a kind of aggressive "greedy reductionism" aimed at reducing social science to biology, and often deployed in support of conservative ideologies - just-so stories justifying male privilege and "free-market" capitalism."
Even if one considers that sort of muddled thinking as reasonable ("aggression" = studying a subject that might reveal facts I may not like), so what? One could say similar or analogous things about the modern theory of evolution. But that doesn't address the question of whether the idea is valid, so where does it get you?
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | June 15, 2009 1:57 PM
"There is no pain like Red Sox pain."
(skips away merrily)
Posted by: Strider | June 15, 2009 1:57 PM
A flash of insight into my own academic upbringing came from this review! My academic uncle, a brilliant, wonderful man, clearly disliked Gould and I could never really figure out why (I remember he hated Gould's use of baseball analogies). It's just occurred to me that at least some of the animosity habored by my conservative academic uncle was likely due to Gould's leftist leanings. Thanks for that!
Posted by: Darren Garrison | June 15, 2009 2:01 PM
PZ, I'm surprised that you aren't more critical of Gould, given his strong belief that science and religion could coexist ("nonoverlapping magisteria") and you are so strongly against that idea.
I wish someone would take the time to do a Gouldian style breakdown of his essays in This View of Life over the years-- a chart of article lengths, word lengths, density of meanders from the topic, obscurity of the meander, etc. I was a great fan of his writing and his death was a great loss to writings of "layman accessible" science, but his writing became less elegant and accessible over the years, not more so.
(FWIW, I think the best contemporary writers for making science understandable for "average people" without dumbing it down are Peter Douglas Ward and Carl Zimmer-- anyone who hasn't read them, should.)
Posted by: The Gay Species | June 15, 2009 2:02 PM
Harvard professors Gould and Lewontin are sociologically evaluated for putting Marx ahead of Darwin, and in the libelous and slanderous assault on E. O. Wilson's sociobiology, by Ullica Segerstrale's Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). What makes this work so vivid and interesting is the "sociologist's" perspective gets the science and the politics right. As far as I am concerned, both professors putting Marx ahead of Darwin, because adaptionism disproves Marx's social theory of knowledge, is NO DIFFERENT than fundamentalist Christians putting the Bible ahead of Marx. Both are "religious dogmas." Segerstrale has benefited from other author's later confirmation of the same diabtribes against Wilson.
Are you serious about Sociobiology: The New Synthesis?
Posted by: Tom Coward | June 15, 2009 2:04 PM
Years ago, when I lived in England, I wrote Gould what was essentially a fan letter, praising his most recent book (I don't remember which one; probably one of his collections of essays). By return post, I received a signed copy of another of his books, with a gracious note thanking me for my letter! Classy and generous!
I bought The Structure of Evolutionary Theory and read it with pleasure. It is indeed somewhat verbose, but is at least reasonably clear and understandable for me as a lay person. As it was public knowledge at the time that he was dying, I attributed the weightyness of the book (over 1000 pages, I believe) to Gould's desire to leave a magnum opus.
Posted by: The Gay Species | June 15, 2009 2:05 PM
Harvard professors Gould and Lewontin are sociologically evaluated for putting Marx ahead of Darwin, and in the libelous and slanderous assault on E. O. Wilson's sociobiology, by Ullica Segerstrale's Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). What makes this work so vivid and interesting is the "sociologist's" perspective gets the science and the politics right. As far as I am concerned, both professors putting Marx ahead of Darwin, because adaptionism disproves Marx's social theory of knowledge, is NO DIFFERENT than fundamentalist Christians putting the Bible ahead of Marx. Both are "religious dogmas." Segerstrale has benefited from other author's later confirmation of the same diabtribes against Wilson.
Are you serious about Sociobiology: The New Synthesis?
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 15, 2009 2:07 PM
Colugo,
No, it most certainly is not bunk. I am very well aware of, and admire, the work of Williams, Hamilton, Trivers and others. As you say yourself: "True, there were crudely simplistic alleged universals, especially about sex, that came in asserted in the 'paper and pencil test of undergrads' ev psych era." But Wilson himself, in On Human Nature pontificated on the supposed social costs of feminist advances, and the virtues of entrepreneurs; and popularisers such as Matt Ridley take an explicitly Thatcherite stance (except when the banks they are running go bust, and they run bawling to nanny state).
Smart human evolutionary behavioral sciences includes plasticity in relation to ecology (see evolutionary anthropology) and the role of culture (see dual inheritance).
The younger generations who read both Gould and other 'pluralists' as well as 'sociobiologists' tend to favor an integrated approach rather than the polemics of the 70s.
Indeed so. Nothing I said in any way contradicts this. Wilson, however, greatly underestimated the role of culture, just as many social scientists underestimate the role of biology.
Posted by: Gabe | June 15, 2009 2:17 PM
At the risk of sparking another pointless "the Humanities are bullshit" debate, I must say that a strength of Gould is exactly that of some of the greatest Continental philosophers; a capacity to shift frames of reference and connect "unrelated" subjects through strong stylistic prose.
Posted by: Colugo | June 15, 2009 2:18 PM
I recall a fellow student giving his abbreviated version of a talk by Gould that he attended:
"Punctuated equilibria. You're stupid, I'm smart. Baseball."
Gould (along with George Will) was a member of a baseball nerd club.
Some things about Gould:
1) Gould was far less radical and unorthodox than his fiercest critics and than even he emphasized; in the spectrum of contemporary evolutionary thought, he was middle of the road and more adaptationist and selectionist than a lot of pluralists/anti-'Darwinian fundamentalists' (as Gould called them).
2) Gould was wrong about some things. (Aren't we all.) And he was unfair to sociobiology in general. He tooted his own horn as a supposed paradigm shifter a mite much. But some of his unorthodoxies were in fact correct and, in hindsight, cutting edge. And his Ontogeny and Phylogeny alone helped revive a whole field of evolutionary study.
3) Gould deserves our appreciation for explaining evolutionary concepts and the history of evolutionary thought - including nonmainstream and out of favor ideas - to the lay public. (Should the public only be spoonfed consensus or modal science in fields in which there is active debate? I don't think so.)
4) Unfortunately, his Mismeasure Of Man is more relevant today than it was when it was first published. Maybe someone can write a sequel.
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 15, 2009 2:21 PM
Divalent,
My point was simple. Wilson was not an apolitical scientist: at least as much as Gould, he had a political stance, which he was not shy of expressing, and which chimed with the rightward move of the time. That doesn't excuse the insults, let alone the physical attack on him, but he would have to be extraordinarily naive not to expect vigorous counter-attacks - in the intellectual sense - to his rubbishing of social science. That most certainly was "aggressive", again, in the intellectual sense - exactly the same sense as the one you used@40:
"Gould aggressively attacked Wilson and his sociobiology ideas (and his Marxist "leanings" are relevant to that issue). Wilson's actions were defensive only."
As you say, whether he was correct scientifically is another matter, but your claim that his actions were purely defensive is just crap.
Posted by: The Gay Species | June 15, 2009 2:24 PM
Harvard professors Gould and Lewontin are sociologically evaluated for putting Marx ahead of Darwin, and in the libelous and slanderous assault on E. O. Wilson's sociobiology, by Ullica Segerstrale's Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). What makes this work so vivid and interesting is the "sociologist's" perspective gets the science and the politics right. As far as I am concerned, both professors putting Marx ahead of Darwin, because adaptionism disproves Marx's social theory of knowledge, is NO DIFFERENT than fundamentalist Christians putting the Bible ahead of Marx. Both are "religious dogmas." Segerstrale has benefited from other author's later confirmation of the same diabtribes against Wilson.
Are you serious about Sociobiology: The New Synthesis?
Posted by: Gabe | June 15, 2009 2:34 PM
Well calling Marx dogma in retrospect is pretty easy, but I really don't think the intent of Marx's writings was to produce a dogmatic system. He himself stated that his ideas would need constant retooling and readaptation as they were sure to become at least in part inaplicable to an already constantly shifting capitalist production system.
Posted by: Colugo | June 15, 2009 2:35 PM
Fair enough, Knockgoats. My bad for misinterpreting what you meant.
As fas as folks using evolutionary theory to promote thatcherism, or social democracy, or Kropotkinist anarchism or whatever, I'm of two minds: 1) keep politics out of science, 2) since scientists appear to be incapable of that, let a thousand flowers bloom. But there is nothing inherent in the theoretical approach of evolutionary ecology itself that mandates a particular politics. I think we're in agreement on that.
I believe of a lot of the controversy surrounding sociobiology, its relatives and its descendants is because we still haven't figured a better way to approach the hardwiring vs blank slate dichotomy, despite repeated declarations over the decades that we have transcended this and are more sophisticated now. Brains do not have Chomsky's LAD or Tooby & Cosmides' modules, nor are they really haplessly infected by memes. They are biased embodying devices. Through development brain-minds (and the larger neuroimmunoendocrine system and total organism) embody ecological, social, and symbolic structures, with inherited (not just genetic but epigenetic as well) perceptual, cognitive, and affective biases that shape this process of embodyment.
Posted by: ppnl | June 15, 2009 2:38 PM
I always wondered why the political split between the two views of evolution. I know that communists didn't like selection but why? It seems about as egalitarian as you can get given that most animals are busy trying to kill and eat each other. And why do leftists like PE better? It looks like a evolutionary version of ethnic cleansing to me.
It all just seems childish to me.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | June 15, 2009 2:55 PM
Very tangled history.
Marx seized on Darwin's theory, favoring it because it discussed a "struggle for survival" for organisms, including humans of course. Marx thought this was scientific backing for his idea that economic systems, government plans and other ideas should be winnowed to the best ones through a similar struggle. There is a famous request to dedicate an edition of Marx's writings to Darwin -- which Darwin refused. Darwin thought Marx muddled, from what little we can learn, and did not study Marx.
Stalin appears not to have understood Darwin at all (I'm unaware of any documentation that Stalin ever studied Darwin). Instead, Stalin didn't like many of the geneticists in the Soviet Union. In the 1920s the Soviet Union led the world in genetics research. Stalin didn't gain favor with many of the scientists, though, nor did they support Stalin's government. Stalin, with the aid of Trofim Lysenko, sought to purge the scientific establishment of these "troublesome" types, and Darwin's theory suffered in the conflict. Darwin represented England and a bourgeois life, and bourgeois politics. Darwin's, and Wallace's, final inspiration for understanding evolution as they discovered it, was an essay by Malthus, which was decidedly capitalist and not Marxist in any way.
In short, there's no good reason for the Soviet distaste for natural selection. But persecute Darwinism and Darwinian scientists and teachers they did. Jobs were cut off, some were exiled to Siberia to die, and probably a few were executed outright. The Lysenko notion of "vernalism" led to massive crop failures, and 4 million dying from starvation -- people who may not have died had the Soviets simply studied Darwin instead of trying to purge their scientific circles of Darwinian influence.
One could make a case that this led to the downfall of the Soviet Union ultimately. To get out of the cycle of crop failures and starvation, Soviets turned to buying wheat from their dreaded enemy, the U.S. Eisenhower loaned them the money to make the purchases, which began a cycle of indebtedness to the U.S. that the Soviet Union could never break, and which contributed to the economic failures which ultimately convinced Gorbachev and his government to call it quits on the Soviet superpower experiment. One disowns Darwin at great personal peril.
Posted by: Biblio Tex | June 15, 2009 3:12 PM
FWIW, E.O. Wilson played the famous water pouring
incident for laughs in his memoir Naturalist.
The guy made a strident announcement, poured a pitcher
of water over him, Steven Jay Gould stood up & chided
everyone, then they all got up & filed out for the
post-lecture banquet. Gould's last book certainly
fits Wilson's personal description of a magnum opus:
that is, a book heavy enough to kill someone
if it fell on their head from a third floor balcony.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | June 15, 2009 3:14 PM
@Knockgoats
I take your point except that many social scientists are irrationally averse to any suggestion that some things might be hard wired, at least to the extent of constraining us or making us susceptible to some things and averse to others. In biology we have got over the nature vs nurture debate and are busy working out the relative contributions in different situations and contexts. It would be nice if our Social Science colleagues could put the politics away and join us, I'm sure we will all learn things. More than endless litanies of 'cultural influences explain everything' anyway.
Posted by: Lettuce | June 15, 2009 3:16 PM
I first heard Steven Gould the day he was on (with Carl Sagan), I tuned in to watch Sagan, I fell in love with Gould.
From the moment in high school, I new what I wanted to read and learn; I was never disappointed (although I did have some strong disagreements with him over his NOMA theory.)
I could care if he was a Marxist, amd I agree with something above by Gabe:
Well calling Marx dogma in retrospect is pretty easy, but I really don't think the intent of Marx's writings was to produce a dogmatic system. He himself stated that his ideas would need constant retooling and readaptation as they were sure to become at least in part inaplicable to an already constantly shifting capitalist production system.
His political perspective was not lost on me, I think his Mismeasure Of Man was wonderful, and led to a lot of discussion at UWM. I believe his "politics", if we can call it that, made his writing more enjoyable... And it's amazing to me that those who don't agree with that would go around calling him out on it, but never debating the points he made.
As for is he a Marxist? I don't know, and I've heard him say that he "wasn't" a Communist, not that that mattered to me.
Posted by: Craig E. | June 15, 2009 3:17 PM
Fascinating cognitive connections going on in my swiss-cheese-like white matter...
In the past 2 years I've read 2 Goulds and 2 Wilsons. Thoroughtly enjoyed both Time's Arrow and Consilience.
Thank you, PZ, for hosting a source of a wealth of information to keep this old boy in reading material 'heaven' to suppport my similar views.
Posted by: deadman_932 | June 15, 2009 3:29 PM
At UCLA, back in the mid-80's, a prof (B.J. Williams) suggested that socio-political influences on Gould's scientific claims might make an interesting paper. I concluded that -- though Gould never explicitly stated the degree to which Hegelian/Marxist thought informed his work -- that the overt influence seemed undeniable.
Nevertheless, it left me wondering if I may have been overstating my case, and I'm grateful to Peter Irons for easing that curiosity a bit. Cheers!
Posted by: Laelaps | June 15, 2009 3:40 PM
I know much of this thread will focus on Gould's relationship to sociobiology, race, &c., but I also recommend checking out Sepkoski and Ruse's recent book The Paleobiological Revolution. How "revolutionary" Gould was will be a continued point of debate, but he was greatly important to the development of paleobiology during the 1970's. He didn't do it alone, of course, but he was one of many scientists who helped give paleontology a new direction.
Posted by: Gabe | June 15, 2009 3:45 PM
Colugo,
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by social structures? Just asking because although I agree with your description of an embodying brain-mind, I have to split hairs when it comes to so called social structures. The widely spread, but inherently flawed, structuralist definition of society relies on a tautological axiom (society is made of the social) completely ill adapted to explain how these structures arise and are maintained.
Of course, the social is not a "stuff" nor some ad hoc metaphysical flux in which we are embeded. Rather, this type of representation of the social is itself in the domain of the symbolic/semiotic, which do emerge from the functioning of the brain. In this sense, the social can be seen a constantly upkept and shifting network of material-semiotic relations never existing outside the bounds of actor participation and material circulation of knowledge, which in turn effect how the actors participate and how information moves.
If this is so, how can the brain-mind embody a structure that can not exist beyond punctual semiotic representations and which is constantly being made through said representation and participation? Must we conclude that the embodiment of a "social structure" happens only at the level of the symbolic or semiotic and effects the human subject in a top-down linear fashion, or rather that "social structures" are difuse nonlinear feedback loops that are, in part, the consequence of other embodied "structures"? And finally, how does participation in such a society effect cognitive devellopement?
Posted by: miguel | June 15, 2009 4:08 PM
hei
what is that development thing? can anybody tell me what was that war about? gould vs sociobiology? what didn't gould like about sociobiologiy?
i've read the selfish gene and i remember gould's ass being kicked hard sometimes, but i cant recall why
Posted by: BA | June 15, 2009 4:14 PM
At #63, a sequel/companion piece was written by Carol Tavris. The Mismeasure of Woman, excellent read.
Posted by: Sandi Fraction
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June 15, 2009 4:18 PM
Gould also wrote an essay "The Median is not the Message" that has become almost required reading for people newly diagnosed with cancer, addressing survival statistics. I greatly enjoyed his work before that and was inspired by his attitude towards dealing with what was, on the face of it, a death sentence in the very near future. When I was faced with cancer myself, that essay was a big help in reminding me to use my intelligence and knowledge rather than giving up or worrying too much about the numbers. Maybe a flawed person, but that one essay has helped a LOT of people, particularly since he did indeed make it to the far end of the survival curve.
Posted by: Colugo | June 15, 2009 4:20 PM
Gabe:
As you suggest, social structures are dynamical, constantly maintained and altered by the activities of agents which themselves contain representations of these (embodyment). A very imprecise analogy: extracellular matrix (especially in the case of bone), can appear permanent and external to the cells that move among it, but it is created by those cells and in turn influences their activities. More familiarly, the anthropogenic landscape - buildings, other infrastructure, altered organisms - is a material manifestation of our social construction. (A special case of niche construction.)
"social structures" are difuse nonlinear feedback loops that are, in part, the consequence of other embodied "structures"
Kind of. The primordial embodied structures are the mapping relations of our own body and its most basic experiences - proprioception, up-down, inside-outside, hot-cold etc. and basic drives. Complex social interactions which become codified arise from the limited number of ways in which small groups of actors can interact, perceptual and cognitive limitations, universal properties of networks, and scaling effects (diversification, hierarchies, viability of various individual and group strategies). Add the idiosyncracies created by history, chance, and the sacralizing magic of oral lore, text (and now audiovisual media - Praise The Fonz) to these and tah dah: what we see as social structure. Neither an independent entity nor a mere epiphenomenon.
Sorry I'm not more articulate and coherent today.
See Lakoff (on embodiment, not politics), Varela, Terrence Deacon, Odling-Smee...
Posted by: Colugo | June 15, 2009 4:28 PM
I meant to spell it "embodiment." My brain somehow switched that with Embodyment, a Christian metal band.
Posted by: H. E. Baber
|
June 15, 2009 4:37 PM
When I was growing up, I had no introduction to evolutionary theory. Sure, I assumed it was true, and I went through the usual long phase of dinosaur fandom, but I was never taught anything at all about evolution throughout my grade school education, and what little I did know was largely stamp-collecting.
Funny business. I'm probably as old as you, PZ Myers, but remember learning lots about evolution in grade school science and high school biology, including long stories, with neat films we watched, about how lightening struck the primordial soup and created big molecules that started reduplicating themselves to create Life.
My political point here is that I think the story according to which American education (and American life generally) was dominated by fundamentalists is inaccurate. When I was going to school everyone took evolution for granted, we learnt about it, accepted it as fact, learnt about the primordial soup as well as the dinosaurs, and most Americans, who were at least nominally religious then, didn't have any problem with it.
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 15, 2009 4:37 PM
Gabe,
Perhaps not a direct answer to what you asked Colugo, but social structures are not by any means purely symbolic/semiotic: they are embodied in houses, fields, domesticated animals and plants, clothes, roads, books, machines etc. This is (one reason) why methodological individualism and biological reductionism are fundamentally mistaken: society cannot be reduced to the actions of individuals, or to our biological nature, because these interact with our socially-produced environment, much of which has been produced by previous generations, and which has its own inherent properties.
I take your point except that many social scientists are irrationally averse to any suggestion that some things might be hard wired, at least to the extent of constraining us or making us susceptible to some things and averse to others. In biology we have got over the nature vs nurture debate and are busy working out the relative contributions in different situations and contexts. - Peter Ashby
I'm sure some are, but I'm not convinced this was, let alone is, as widespread as (for example) Pinker claims in The Blank Slate. I'm also sceptical about the "relative contributions" notion, if this is taken to mean it makes sense to apportion percentages. To give an example, in practically all societies (maybe all), most violence is physically carried out (though not necessarily organised) by adolescent and young adult males. This, probably, has a fairly direct biological basis. But the amount of such violence varies by orders of magnitude between societies - and it's most unlikely this is due to innate differences.
Posted by: carnitine | June 15, 2009 4:55 PM
While I do love Gould, I don't think his writing is in the same league as Sagan's. Gould wrote about things much more relevant to my field and did so powerfully, but Sagan was truly in his own league with regard to his ability to provide perspective on the beauty of science. I doubt I'll ever see writing equal to his.
Posted by: The Gay Species | June 15, 2009 4:55 PM
As a gay man who came of age in the late 60s and early 70s, the religious practice of psychology was still practicing reparative therapy [infra.] -- what University of Illinois (emeritus) professor of psychology in The Puzzle: Exploring the Evolutionary Puzzle of Male Homosexuality (self-published, 2003) -- which Dr. Berman on page 506 writes: "Recovery from homosexuality is something like recovery from alcoholism." In 2003?
In 1971, when homophilia was still deemed a "pathology" and psychoanalysts could "cure" us, I visited a shrink at a well-intentioned, but clearly misguided person's urging, who professed to "cure homosexuality." The logic was if I could be "normal," why would I not want to?
The psychologists attached electrodes to my genitalia, erogenous zones,and showed me photos of handsomely naked men. As my "response" to the photos became visible, electrical current was sent through my body. My father was outraged that anyone would practice torture, otherwise known as Pavlovian Operant Conditioning, the Aversive Measures -- Pavlov's experiments were with dogs, which tells you where his head was -- and after nine months I regained my sexual abilities. If it's "just like alcoholism," as Berman states, his love for myth is much more prevalent than we think.
Psychologists still practice variants of this nonsense, but it was E. O. Wilson's On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) that took these bastardly quacks to task in his Pulitzer Awarded book. For a people that suffered the Holocaust, what in the world were they doing to us? No one agrees with Wilson's Shamanistic theory, but he stood up for "biological normality of homosexuality" earlier than the professions that have terrorized gay men and lesbians the most.
My sole point, is that any theory that lacks empirical and rational support is "metaphysics," and using the great philosopher Karl Popper's obvious falsification criterion,
If a claim cannot be falsified, Popper wrote in the 1930s and 1940s. then it cannot be verified, and therefore is metaphysics. Apparently, Gould and Lewontin missed the great philospher of science's writings.
I refer professional psychiatrist to consult McGuire & Troisi's excellent Darwinian Psychiatry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) which confirms Popper's observations. But when you get religion, you lack the two criteria of science: Empiricism and Reason (conjectures and refutation). Popper was not gay to my knowledge, but his writings were influential in pushing the Quacks of 1973, meeting in HI, to admit they could not provide any empirical or rational support for their claims, much less the effectiveness of "reparative therapy," since most gay men that underwent it committed suicide.
So, what, I ask, is Berman still doing practicing reorientation therapy and identify homophilia with alcoholism?
Posted by: cicely
|
June 15, 2009 5:03 PM
H. E. Baber @ 82:
I suggest that it would depend on where you were, whether evolution was taught and whether it was accepted as fact. The materials covered in my So.Cal. Jr. High School were far more detailed than those we covered in my rural OK High School. In the first case, the religious community didn't seem to notice one way or another, but in the second, some were very vocal against anything that smacked of evolution.
In retrospect, I suppose that the coverage we got in my high school biology class was a compromise; a one-week unit on evolution, then off the subject, which wasn't mentioned again. I must say, it sure made compartmentalization easy, and didn't rock my little creationist canoe at all.
Posted by: Lettuce | June 15, 2009 5:21 PM
I learned very much about evolution at St. Mary's school in Hagerstown, Maryland. And the person leading us was a Catholic, in fact a Nun.
She, however, came from a convent about 2 miles from where I am now, and I think that the discussion in public school was less.
My learning about evolution was also great by the time I was at Christ King School in Wauwatosa, WI... One year, but it completely disappeared at Pius XI High School in Milwaukee, and I didn't get it again until I was at Wauwatosa East High School.
I don't know how much this has changed, and I assume it's a lot having looked at my sons books from Wauwatosa West... But it was something, and I don't believe my eyes would have been opened had I not gone to St. Mary's.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
|
June 15, 2009 5:31 PM
I have to disagree. Even in his essays Gould would wander off topic to smell the flowers and admire the clouds on his way to explaining whatever subject he was writing on. I consider Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov to have been much better populizers of science than Gould. I enjoyed reading Gould's essays. He was an excellent writer. However I think Sagan and, particularly, Asimov to have been better science writers.
Posted by: PharmGirl MD | June 15, 2009 6:04 PM
Very nice review. Although Dr. Gould's many popular works have been mentioned, I have not seen much about his major scientific publications. His first shot across the bow of standard Darwinian evolutionary theory was written with his colleague, Richard Lewontin, in 1979: http://tinyurl.com/mwqzpn.
Does the current book deal only with his popular persona, or does it also reflect upon his important scientific contributions?
On a personal note, as an undergraduate, I was fortunate to attend classes led by both Drs. Gould and Lewontin and Dr. Wilson. Perhaps it was my plastic brain at the time, but I found no difficulty in integrating the two different world views (and neither camp presented any political bias). I loved and appreciated both, and was particularly fond of rushing to class at 8 am to Dr. Gould's rumpled hair and cardigan -- a sort of evolutionary mad scientist Mr. Rogers.
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 15, 2009 6:14 PM
@#8:
Surely, 'these internal constraints' are just limitations on what would otherwise be available to natural selection?
Not sure I'd add "just", but essentially I think you are correct; we really are looking at constraints to some extent.
They are not an external (to the organism) sorting process on a par with natural selection.
hmm, I'd look at it more like "feedback". Does that help?
feedback can indeed be a powerful sorting mechanism, but I personally would still classify feeback mechanisms including developmental constraints as a subcategory of natural selection.
btw, since this thread is about book reviews and recommendations, I would heartily recommend Sean Caroll's: Endless Forms Most Beautiful as being a wonderful treatise on the intersection between developmental biology and evolutionary biology.
for writings of those embroiled in the nature/nuture war of the 70's, I would recommend reading WD Hamilton's "Narrow Roads of Gene Land", especially as being representative of the schools of thought in opposition to Gould and Lewontin's social/ethical concerns regarding the nature of evolution and human behavior.
an excellent "afterwards" was put out in the late 70's:
"Sociobiology: Beyond Nature-Nurture?" by Barlow and Silverberg
some of which was also refined later and represented here:
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/2/286
One could very well argue that evo/devo effectively ended the nature/nurture debates by clarifying the role both play.
Posted by: scooter
|
June 15, 2009 8:02 PM
Many of Gould's Natural History essays were reprinted in collected volumes, such as Ever Since Darwin and The Panda's Thumb.
I recommend the essays to avoid the dreaded aforementioned Prolixity
Posted by: Silver Fox | June 15, 2009 8:07 PM
In evolutionary biology what is the standing of Harold Bloom. His book is the Cosmic Mind. He seems to be pressing for a collective evolutionary will. He cites David Sloan Wilson. Are either of these fellows biologists? The book jacket given no CV on Bloom.
Posted by: YouGottaShowMe | June 15, 2009 8:08 PM
20 May 2002. I remember it like it was today; when I heard the news (from my older brother, who in the meantime has also died of cancer) I almost cried. It felt rather like a part of my world had collapsed. Just as PZ said, Gould's personal warmth (yes, and charmth) shone through every page, and it was pretty hard not to feel uplifted by the prose. This was a clever fellow who was so nice and engagingly positive you almost had to want to be like him. He did like the sound of his own voice, but you had to give it to him, it was a sweet voice!
Thanks a bunch, PZ, for your affectionate and scrupulously fair review. I'm reminded of Richard Dawkins's "Unfinished Correspondence with an Evolutionary Heavyweight" (in A Devil's Chaplain), correctly blurbed as touching and gracious (by Eldredge and Coyne, respectively).
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 15, 2009 8:11 PM
Still haven't done your home work Silver Fox.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
June 15, 2009 8:17 PM
SF, we don't give a shit what you find interesting. You are just a fool. Since PR left, you are our total fool. The poster we bring out to show others what not to do. Show some intelligence. Stop posting here.
Posted by: jworker | June 15, 2009 8:31 PM
Perhaps this thread might be a good place for someone to help me come up with a reference that I *think* SJ Gould wrote once, butkhave been unable to source, despite google and skimming thru old books of his. If my poor memory servers, the general gist is something about a final synthesis in biology and developmental biology as a common playing field, something paraphrased like this...
...if there is ever to be a final synthesis in biology it will occur over the common playing field of developmental biology where both evolutionary biology and molecular biology have common and overlapping interests.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Posted by: Patricia, OM | June 15, 2009 8:35 PM
Silver Fox - Really why do you come here? Isn't Vox Day, your hero, much more fun than we are?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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June 15, 2009 8:47 PM
The only Harold Bloom I've ever heard of is a literary critic and professor of English.
Posted by: wet_bread
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June 15, 2009 9:03 PM
Reading Wonderful Life in college was a seminal moment--a bombshell moment, really--in the development of my interest not only in evolution but in deep time and all that flows from it.
Posted by: JP | June 15, 2009 9:28 PM
Eliezer Yudkowsky has quite a spray about Gould http://lesswrong.com/lw/kv/beware_of_stephen_j_gould/.
I'm curious as to whether this is a commonly held opinion by profesionals in the field - as Eliezer claims - or whether he speaks just for himself.
Posted by: elko | June 15, 2009 9:40 PM
well i'm a bit younger than PZ and I grew up reading Dawkins, and as a result i find Gould absolutely impossible to read. its just self indulgent pomposity from start to finish.
and for a much more intelligent way in which to infuse your biological thinking with your social and political values, read Peter Singer's 'A Darwinian Left.'
All Lewontin and Gould did in attacking Wilson was attempt to censor a truth they found uncomfortable, and with the privilege of hindsight that was just dumb. they gave the likes of Matt Ridley most of their right wing interpetations in the first place.
Posted by: Kevin Schreck | June 15, 2009 9:44 PM
How you came to understand and become enthralled by evolution is nearly identical to my own experience, PZ. And this book sounds very interesting.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 15, 2009 9:59 PM
A handy bibliography of SJG is available here. I have read all of his early stuff, up to Wonderful Life or so, and found it all excellent. I used to subscribe to Natural History magazine--for years--mainly for his column. But around 1990 I started getting sick of his writing, and quit reading him pretty much altogether shortly after that. I wish I had a dime for every time he used the words "maximal" and "canonical." Used to make me crazy.
I think he's generally over-rated as an evolutionary theorist, though I have not read the brick. He had a gift for neologism and spin that tended to inflate the implied originality of what he wrote about. And he was often unclear.
Posted by: lithopithecus | June 15, 2009 10:15 PM
It was the one-two punch combination of Gould and Trivers that got me hooked as an undergrad.
I just re-read 'Bully for Brontosaurus'.
Some of those essays are just goddamned excellent.
Posted by: Holbach
|
June 15, 2009 10:37 PM
Sven DiMilo @ 103
I agree with your evaluation of SJG, having subscribed to Natural History for years and always reading his column first. I have most of his books which made an impression on me when they came out, but like you my admiration for him waned for the very reasons you mentioned. My atheism took on a more entrenched aspect and his writing eventually has diminished from what they were when he tended to obscure his writing with ever more references to religion. In fact, several of his books make copious remarks to religion and many of his chapters have a biblical quote or reference at the heading of those chapters which annoyed me as he was constantly railing against religion for denigrating evolution and science. It was at this time, as Richard Dawkins has mentioned, that several reviewers and authors writing in The New York Review Of Books have questioned and brought him to task for his obvious acquiescence to religious leanings and regard. I have saved those articles, and especially the one cited by Richard @ 52 which succinctly reveals Gould as he truly was. He was never completely free of religion in his writing and, I believe, in his personal embracement of spiritual concerns.
His nature and science writings are to be admired, but I think he has tainted his books with too frequent references to religion, and so I have not read him in years though his books sit on the shelves. I consider him an earlier version of Ken Miller who also cannot detach his science from imaginary spiritual nonsense, and this alone reduces my regard for both individuals.
Posted by: BA | June 15, 2009 10:38 PM
At #83, that is a purely Pavlovian paradigm. Pairing stimuli to classically condition aversion to the target stimulus. Horrible idea and doomed to fail as an intervention from the start given genetic predisposition.
From an operant psychologist.
Posted by: Kel | June 15, 2009 10:54 PM
I wonder when those people will actually get what "The Selfish Gene" actually means, or figure out the purpose of the weasel program.Posted by: jomega | June 15, 2009 11:03 PM
Kinda OT, but this looked like a good place to ask:
I once checked out The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and started to read it. I seem to recall that he author started rambling on about architecture. At length. I understood the point he was making, but was supremely discouraged to think that the entire book might continue to test my patience with digressions and overwrought metaphors.
My question is, is it worth the time and effort to go back and read the thing, or not?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 15, 2009 11:05 PM
Silver Fox, did you run away... again?
Posted by: jomega | June 15, 2009 11:12 PM
Oops. I meant overwrought similies. Though perhaps there were metaphors as well. Should I bother to find out?
Posted by: Steven Dunlap | June 16, 2009 12:02 AM
@Posted by: Ed Darrell #69
I am interested to know in which specific books or essays Marx mentions Darwin. Also a source for the famous request to dedicate one of his books to Darwin. I never hear of this before.
As for Stalin vs. Darwin's ideas (or evolution in general) the principle problem was Lysenko. Lysenko led the purge of geneticists who disagreed with him, aided by Stalin, not the other way around. Lysenko had cooked up this cockamamie idea, a variation on lamarckism, that happened to be what Stalin wanted to hear. In dictatorships run by a xenophobic megalomaniac it's easy to provoke said megalomaniac into action: just feed him an idea that's too good to be true and then anyone who attempts to argue against it looks like a counter-revolutionary. Lysenko set back Soviet agronomy and genetics about 50 years.
Lots of bad decisions and policies ran the Soviet Union into the ground. From Lysenko to Chernobyl the disasters and idiocy just piled on and on like a really bad multi-car crash. Those interested in some of the other amusing (or infuriating) cases of Stalin vs. Science and the laws of nature can take a look at The Ghost of the executed engineer, a short and very readable history book published in the 1990s.
One last note about Stalin and his education: in his youth he wanted to be a priest and his education was mostly theological. He came to reject that teaching but brought a dogmatic mode of thinking to his acceptance of communism. He made himself very popular within the Social Democratic party by way of his success as a bank robber (funding the revolution) and his talent for administration. Beware the guy who does all the paperwork: things get done by who does 'em.
Posted by: Michael Ellis | June 16, 2009 12:30 AM
"The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" is Gould's "Finnegan's Wake". There's undoubtedly some good stuff in there, but you have to trawl through 1000+ pages of unedited stream-of-consciousness to find it. I gave up around halfway through.
I think "Full House" (the book, not the sitcom) is possibly his most underrated work.
Posted by: africangenesis | June 16, 2009 1:03 AM
"an extravagant prolixity", "direct shunt from his heart", "long detours through the scenery", "passionate and personal"
For someone you think was " the best science writer of the 20th century", you are having to apologize for a whole lot.
"We're supposed to be dispassionate, aloof, objective, non-partisan, and there's a prejudice that you're a lesser man (yeah, it's also a male bias) if you step away from the illusion of impartiality."
Cut the postmodernist bullcrap. It should tell you something that in order to defend Gould you have to go to the extremis of mocking attempts at rigor and evidence based reasoning.
You can't have it both ways, perhaps we should all seek the "illusion of impartiality" if the result is a Dawkins-like "clarity". Gould's obfuscation most likely reflects the muddle of his thinking. When it takes so many others to explain what he actually meant and to argue that he actually understood the subject, it is obvious that what he failed to communicate, he may also have failed to understand. The wonder is, that he actually managed to make a couple contributions to the science.
Dawkins communicated persuasively to the scientific community in a way that was so clear that he also succeeded as a popularizer, I don't see the "pretense".
Posted by: Midnight Rambler | June 16, 2009 1:27 AM
Considering that the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, and most of Marx's other works came out before the Origin as well, I seriously doubt it was a real influence. Das Kapital was afterwards, but given that the ideas must have been formulated a long time in advance I would think that if the mention of Darwin is true at all, it would have been as a sort of post-hoc validation rather than an influence.Posted by: Dale Husband | June 16, 2009 1:41 AM
Another powerful attribute that Gould had was that he made science passionate and personal — he was the popularizer of science who had a direct shunt from his heart to his pen. No science writer has equalled him in that, and it was central to his appeal. He made science human and important.
You must be joking! I always thought Carl Sagan and Issac Asimov were better writers. All three of them are gone, we still have Richard Dawkins, who also gives the writings of Gould some stiff competition.
Posted by: blopf | June 16, 2009 2:02 AM
jworker #96 :
The quote you are looking for must be from the end of "Ontogeny and Phylogeny" : "An understanding of regulation must lie at the center of any rapprochement between molecular and evolutionary biology; for a synthesis of the two biologies will surely take place, if it occurs at all, on the common field of development."
Posted by: cyan
|
June 16, 2009 2:54 AM
"muddle of his thinking" ...
That is an assumption that one's understanding of a subject results in an equal ability to communicate that understanding by writing, to ALL who read those writings.
From responses to this thread, there are many who have followed Gould's written trains with a benefit to their understanding.
Different paths to getting to the same points.
I have savored each of Dawkin's works, the ideas crystalline to me, because of the effect of his writing style to the way I think, and have speed-read all of Gould's essays, because after Dawkins, Gould's works are, to me, tedious in getting to a point.
To say that Gould's thinking is muddled seems more a comparison of the reader's thought processes to that of Gould's writing train than to the point of helping instill insight to those who find Dawkins or others' trains less helpful than Gould.
Uh-oh. In this view, it could be supposed that I'm a marxist in my view of communication of ideas.
It is absurd that, because one communicator resonates with you, personally, more than another, who resonates with others, the first is considered "better". Instead, its whoever gets many to the point is invaluable. Gould and Dawkins are each invaluable and are each irreplaceable.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | June 16, 2009 4:52 AM
Gould is the guy who made me understand what Darwin is all about, how natural selection works (I had had a very poor and confused philosophy lesson on the topic in high school, and it used to look like a big mess to me). His "Mismeasure of man" even helped me to understand things that I had difficulties to graps in multidimensional statistics. So I owe him quite a lot.
Posted by: africangenesis | June 16, 2009 4:52 AM
cyan,
"Uh-oh. In this view, it could be supposed that I'm a marxist in my view of communication of ideas...It is absurd that, because one communicator resonates with you, personally, more than another, who resonates with others, the first is considered "better"."
I see, so no objective distinctions may be drawn between Gould's and Dawkins' writing styles, in fact it all just a matter of style and subjective preference. People's minds just work in different ways. Like Marxism, Gould's writing destined to become a mystery religion accessible to only a "chosen" few who are willing to make the extra effort and to whom the dialectic has been revealed. Thesis, plus subjectively chosen antithesis, resulting in a just-so-story synthesis. It is all clearn now.
Posted by: Richard Dawkins | June 16, 2009 4:53 AM
Here's a heartwarming little anecdote to illustrate Stephen Gould's gentle courtesy. The BBC has a Monday morning radio program called Start the Week, in which a panel of four intellectuals, or authors with new books to promote, gather in a studio and have a civilised conversation with a chairman. The psychologist Sue Blackmore was on the panel one week, and so was Stephen Gould. They hadn't met before, but Dr Blackmore recognized him in the lobby of the BBC as they waited to go in, and she thought she ought to go up and introduce herself. Hand outstretched and with her usual bright smile, she approached him. "How do you do, Dr Gould, I believe we are on Start the Week together." Gould uttered not a word, but turned on his heel and faced the other way, presenting her with his back.
Posted by: Drosera
|
June 16, 2009 4:57 AM
Gould's writings should be taken in small doses. After reading several of his essays within a short period their design pattern becomes too obvious and, to me at least, irritating. One could almost envision an article called 'How to write an S. J. Gould Essay.'
Start with some random quote, for example something from Shakespeare, spin it in such a way that it somehow seems relevant to the topic at hand, throw in some stuff about baseball, and you are already half done.
Nevertheless, his better essays are very good indeed.
Posted by: cindy | June 16, 2009 5:05 AM
Landscaping Directory
Hello,
We have started with a unique landscaping directory.
We have already added all your information and a link
to your website.
I would be grateful if you could add a small link to
this directory in your footer.
Landscape Architects
I look forward to make this relation successful.
Thanks
Cindy
Posted by: africangenesis | June 16, 2009 5:07 AM
I must be older than most here, because noone has yet mentioned Desmond Morris or Robert Ardrey who helped feed and inspire my life long interest in human nature and origins. Since I haven't revisited them since my youth, I don't know how well they have aged. I know they explored not just the subject material, but speculative theories that may not have stood the test of time.
Posted by: cindy | June 16, 2009 5:09 AM
Landscaping Directory
Hello,
We have started with a unique landscaping directory.
We have already added all your information and a link
to your website.
I would be grateful if you could add a small link to
this directory in your footer.
Landscape Architects
I look forward to make this relation successful.
Thanks
Cindy
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 16, 2009 5:20 AM
africangenesis,
I'd guess the reason no-one has mentioned Morris or Ardrey is that real anthropological scientists laughed at them when they were published, and have continued to do so ever since. They were just selling sensationalist just-so stories about sex (Morris) and violence (Ardrey). If they were your starting point (and I notice you name yourself after one of Ardrey's bits of nonsense), no wonder you'll still believe any old crap that fits your preconceptions.
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 16, 2009 5:39 AM
Also a source for the famous request to dedicate one of his books to Darwin. I never hear of this before. - Steven Dunlap
It's a myth: http://friendsofdarwin.com/articles/2000/marx/.
When it takes so many others to explain what he actually meant and to argue that he actually understood the subject, it is obvious that what he failed to communicate, he may also have failed to understand. The wonder is, that he actually managed to make a couple contributions to the science. - africangenesis
Well now, the fact that he did (and pretty significant ones), would seem to indicate that his thinking wasn't so muddled after all. Maybe it's your prejudices that prevent you appreciating the best of his writing.
Incidentally, I wonder if the later deterioration in his writing could have been partly due to side-effects of treatment for mesothelioma.
Here's a heartwarming little anecdote to illustrate Stephen Gould's gentle courtesy... - Richard Dawkins
Can't say I'm impressed by this sort of second-hand tittle-tattle. I'd thought better of you.
Posted by: Rorschach | June 16, 2009 5:43 AM
Prof Dawkins @ 120,
You witnessed that ?
I admit to not knowing much about Gould,but I wouldnt draw conclusions about his work from who he shakes hands with or not.
Posted by: africangenesis | June 16, 2009 5:45 AM
Knockgoats,
"I notice you name yourself after one of Ardrey's bits of nonsense"
Probably, but not consciously. Territorial Imperative was the name I recalled consciously. "africangenesis" must have been brought to the fore by all the publication of the mitochondrial eve and the debate over the out of africa hypothesis.
"They were just selling sensationalist just-so stories about sex (Morris) and violence (Ardrey)."
Well we all know how inspiring those can be.
"real anthropological scientists laughed at them when they were published, and have continued to do so ever since."
Do you have any cites? I probably always knew that Morris was speculative. Ardrey covered the territorial behavior of a several species, and then speculated about similar patterns he saw in human societies. My expectation was that the animal behavior cited was supported by the evidence then available. One could clearly see that the human discussion was extrapolation. I don't remember any definitive human conclusions, in fact, he classified cultures differently. Both made better cases for their speculation than Kropotkin.
Posted by: Shirakawasuna | June 16, 2009 6:06 AM
Excellent! I love the topic of Gould.
I am very hard on him. I think he oversold his position too often and knew he was doing it. It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I read his papers, newspaper/magazine articles, and communications with critics. With that said, some of his books are absolutely *fantastic* like PZ said and yes 'the Structure...'is pedantic to a fault, but overall I appreciate his science evangelism.
Which is why I have trouble coming up with a non-changing opinion on Gould. I find that he makes arguments very strongly but does not properly incorporate the points of his critics - example: he apparently got quite annoyed when it was pointed out that a significant part of his evidence for punk eek had been misinterpreted and in fact far finer gradations existed just as you'd expect with a far more gradual situation. It seems, sadly, to fit the way he acted with some (not all) critics, and it makes it very hard for me to trust a lot of what he says. His attacks on Dawkins are particularly weak and again, ignore much of what Dawkins said. Unlike Krugman, I don't think he misunderstood his critics at all. I think he just refused to back down from the partisan ledge he had firmly sat himself on :(.
He reminds me of Jack Horner, only amplified. Jack Horner is a fine paleontologist with a great career, then he goes and claims that T-Rex was primarily or entirely a scavenger just to get people thinking and consider the neglected alternative hypotheses. Gould did something similar with both punk eek and 'pluralism', I think, but he actually believed in a version of his own position but took it too far in challenging people to consider the alternative hypotheses. He was clearly serious about his general claims, but it's hard to miss the overspent partisan in a lot of his writings.
Just to get a little self-absorbed, I'm not saying that being partisan is bad, or passion is bad, as PZ described. Scientists should be fierce (and are fierce) and should drop the pretense of cool objectivity at all times. With that said, I think Gould often went too far and instigated most of those nasty conflicts. There's a point where you go from being partisan to being viciously, irrationally partisan, and I think he stepped over that line too often.
Posted by: windy | June 16, 2009 6:07 AM
I hope so too, but he has a point there. The essay is actually interesting, although it first makes you worry that he's going to go silly with the maximization thing. (And his concept of what evolutionary theorists do seems somewhat limited.) But what he says about evolutionary explanations doesn't seem to be completely off the mark.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 16, 2009 6:10 AM
I've thoroughly enjoyed most of SJG's essays, but his meanderings around NOMA left me cold. He was at his best when sticking closely to biology, baseball or both.
Posted by: Shirakawasuna | June 16, 2009 6:10 AM
I'm also just an undergrad and I'd *like* to think that I can read and trust most of what Gould's books say. Does anyone know of an actually good synthesis of the whole debate w/ Gould on multiple topics? I mean something big, like a website, not a thin-ish book.
Thanks!
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 16, 2009 6:17 AM
africangenesis,
There's an article from 1973 at The Killer Ape is Dead. I doubt whether there are many, if any, peer-reviewed responses to either, because they were never serious science. Kropotkin's work, despite its flaws, was. It was based on years of his own observations in Siberia as well as historical and sociological research. His basic insight, that cooperation and mutual aid are indeed important factors in evolution, is supported by a vast body of modern work in ethology, sociobiology, evolutionary game theory and other fields. Again, your prejudice and ignorance are evident.
Posted by: africangenesis | June 16, 2009 6:33 AM
Knockgoats#133,
That 1973 work was far too soon. Ardrey's idea that aggression distinguished the human lineage wasn't put to rest until Goodall's research showed that Chimpanzees shared what could no longer be viewed as a distinction, the coalitional defense of territory: war.
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 16, 2009 6:43 AM
africangenesis,
The point is there was never any real empirical support for Ardrey. The basic confusion between hunting and intra-specific aggression would have been enough for any real ethologist to dismiss it as rubbish. Konrad Lorenz (not a man I find at all sympathetic) made this abundantly clear in On Aggression (1966), but makes the same point in Man Meets Dog (1950), in connection with his dog's reaction to the introduction of a kitten to his home. I doubt this distinction was at all new even then.
Posted by: Steve P. | June 16, 2009 7:27 AM
Probably due to all those harmful mutations overwhelming the beneficial ones.
At 10,000:1 in favor of the bad guys, I'd say SJG didn't have much choice in the matter.
:)
Posted by: John Morales | June 16, 2009 7:38 AM
PZ,
Quite a recommendation! I confess I've not read any of Gould's essays, but this predisposes me to seek some out.
I will say that, if he was anywhere near the quality of Asimov (regarding popularising science, such as with Far as Human Eye Could See), I have truly missed out.
--
AG, I remember reading The Naked Ape as a teenager, and being quite impressed - it was so obvious humans were just another animal species; nonetheless, even then I thought that a lot of the extrapolations were, as KG says, just-so stories.
Posted by: DebinOz | June 16, 2009 8:04 AM
I was educated for 12 years pre-university at Catholic schools during the 60s and eary 70s in Australia.
I remember like it was yesterday, the class on the peppered moth and the Industrial Revolution. It was presented to us, young Catholic girls, as a given - evolution was real. There was no discussion on any conflict with creationism.
What little we were taught about the Old Testament, occurred in primary school. And once again, I can clearly remember Sister Theresiana saying that the Old Testament was written in a simple way, for simple people, in simple times. And they were just stories.
I honestly didn't realise that people could actually believe in creationism until I moved to the USA in 1980 and married into a fundie family.
It's only now that I am reading Darwin, Gould, etc., for the beauty of their writings, and for the historical context.
Posted by: windy | June 16, 2009 8:08 AM
Konrad Lorenz (not a man I find at all sympathetic)
Not even a tiny, tiny bit?
Posted by: Drosera
|
June 16, 2009 9:10 AM
Here is Gould on NOMA.
The following quote from another article summarizes his (in my view utterly wrong) position:
"we simply can't comment on it as scientists."
We can and we must.
Posted by: Knockgoats | June 16, 2009 9:32 AM
windy@139,
Well, for me, pictures like that are kind of outweighed by his support for the Nazis.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 16, 2009 9:42 AM
Looks like he's the lead quack.
Posted by: Strakh | June 16, 2009 9:53 AM
Holbach @ #105:
Thank you. You encapsulated my own ambivalence about Gould. He was my first exposure to 'popular' science writing and at the time, he was 'it' for me. My own advancement in scientific knowledge grew as Gould began to lean more openly toward his religious beliefs. When he came up with NOMA, I was stunned, disappointed, and felt great shame for him. When I learned about his continuing bouts with cancer, I began to understand.
He is certainly a man we need to remember, but by no means is he even close to being 'the best science writer of the 20th century.' Asimov, Dawkins, Sagan, Dennett, etc., prove such a statement wrong.
His contributions are of supreme value, however, and must be acknowledged.
His works remain on my shelf and will be passed on to my daughter at my death as we keep such excellent works against the coming dark age.
Posted by: meprimate | June 16, 2009 10:26 AM
I knew Steve Gould well in the early 70s.
Hard to imagine, but we were both under 30. His good heart, brilliance and enthusiasm for life were amazing. I recall no politics and it’s hard to imagine that anyone would have cared. For what it’s worth, although he may have seemed physically somewhat awkward, he routinely creamed me on the squash court.
As an aside, Ed Wilson gave the best classroom lectures I’ve ever heard. (Steve was articulate to a fault.) Wilson would stand almost primly in front of his classes holding a few neatly shuffled 3X5 cards to which he occasionally referred. Luminous clarity and bits of humor streamed from his mouth. At least once we gave him a standing ovation.
PZ is right. Both of these guys were walking, talking thunderbolts. The thunder still rolls.
Posted by: NelC | June 16, 2009 11:20 AM
Richard Dawkins @120: Gould is dead. You won the argument. Do you need to keep sticking the knife in?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 16, 2009 11:27 AM
Wait I'm confused.
Gould was a landscaper?
Posted by: Colugo | June 16, 2009 12:31 PM
I doubt that #120 is actually Richard Dawkins himself. It's unlikely that Dawkins is that petty about his great rival. (But Darwin vs Agassiz they are not.)
There are bunch of Nazis, Commies, racists, and eugenicists in the annals of science. As long as (some) of their science was good, it stays in. And an inordinate number of Nobel laureates who are complete cranks.
Morris, Dart (who was the big source for Ardrey), Lorenz were part of a trend of man the hunter/aggressor and much of that has not held up very well. But they did excite a lot of people about anthropology. And the pendulum is swinging back to hunting and aggression (especially intergroup) being important in human evolution. One major difference is that while Dart and others of that era focused on the australopithecine phase - the early phase after splitting from apes - the new emphasis for these activities are erectus and after. The revival of group selectionism is an important element of the new interest in intergroup competition (warfare and genocide).
Groups cooperate to compete with other groups. Competition between individuals undermines intragroup cooperation. So Spencerian competition and Kropotkinist cooperation are both important at various levels of biological organization; what matters are the factors that foster one or the other.
I think it's silly to be offended by Gould's copious quoting of religious texts. He viewed scripture as a cultural document, an emblem of the accumulated knowledge and art of civilization. He loved Bach and Chartes cathedral. There is no incompatibility between aesthetic appreciation of civilizational achievements and atheism.
And do we really want science to decide on matters of theology? (And philosophy, aesthetics, ethics etc.) Should physics textbooks state that there is no purpose in the cosmos, and should neurobiology texts opine on the existence of the soul? I think it's an attempt to turn science into an overarching philosophy, but I guess a lot of people still got the zeal.
Posted by: Holbach
|
June 16, 2009 1:29 PM
Colugo @ 147
I will not bother to comment on your next to last paragraph but suffice it to say that I do not agree with you on the aesthetic appreciation of the religious aspects of ongoing civilization, which could no doubt exist and advance if religion had not been present. I have expressed my views on this quandary several times before as is mt wont, and all to the dismay and opposition to many commenters here.
Science should have no need or requiremnet to decide on matters of religion as the subject should be considered beyond it's consideration for discussion or even acknowledgement other than to render the subject illogical and not worth the inclination to even regard it. Religion exists, therefore science should comment on it as it is; a system of illogical and unsubstantiated circumstances born in the human brain to explain the existence of all that we are and see, and perpetuated by humanity over time to lend credence to an idea only enforced by countless millions dead and alive who have never proven unequivocally that an imaginary god gave rise to it all. Pure science has deemed it untrue and needless and should not be involved in proving otherwise. If possible, the imaginary god can prove it to be so and thereby render all the musings of science mootand stand on the irrefutable evidence.
Physics has eloquently stated that there is no purpose in the cosmos, but random happenstance which the universe in it's natural state knows nothing about but which the human mind attempts to dictate otherwise.
Neurobiology texts should not opine on the existence of something that does not exist, as that would be to not only denigrate a science into discoursing on a useless and unsound idea perpetrated by religion, but also to cause the concept of untainted science vulnerable to illogical precepts.
Science is a zeal, and transcends anything that hints at unreason, whether it be religious or otherwise. As far as I'm concerned, science should never have to be in the silly predictament of explaining the non-existence in terms of being unexplainable.
Posted by: Colugo | June 16, 2009 2:34 PM
By the way, anyone see Futurma's 'Beast With A Billion Backs'? One of the most scathing indictments of religious faith that I have ever seen. Instead of attacking the truth value of claims about God and Heaven it presents a scenario in which they are real (in a sense) and shows how grotesque and insipid that would be.
Posted by: meprimate | June 16, 2009 4:04 PM
RE: posts 120, 126
Having known Steve Gould pretty well in the 70s I find this incident very hard to imagine. If there’s anything to it in the first place, someone misread the situation or has an
axe to grind.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | June 16, 2009 4:23 PM
PZ I met SJG a couple of times, I miss him, and I remember those fights well (most of it seemed to happen in the letters-to-the-editor of various journals).
The highest level antagonists like Wilson, Dawkins, Lewontin, Gould, were all people of merit and honesty, and the disputes ( I would say units of selection were much bigger deals than spandrels and punctuated equilibrium because the former condition how you actually think and the latter are either minor or major questions as data and the focus of data change) were meaningful and important, but some of the lesser attackers of Stephen Jay Gould were people I learned to despise and their current prominence has done nothing to change that.
Some popularizers haven't really contributed to science beyond their popularization but some like Gould or Sagan, have, and that's doubly impressive, because you have to have 2 talents and you can't cheat in your popularization.
Posted by: Strakh | June 16, 2009 4:45 PM
Concerning the Holbach and Colugo conversation from 147 and 148:
Excellent reply, Holbach. In these two letters we get exactly what the whole fracas with NOMA was about. The patently ridiculous comments by Colugo about philosophy, aesthetics, etc., were very neatly exposed for their complete idiocy.
In these two letters we see why NOMA is a failed attempt at reconciling science and religion, which, while a noble thought, is completely unnecessary.
Any scientist who cannot grasp that reality needs to study religion and its consequences as assiduously as he or she has studied his or her scientific speciality.
Posted by: fbj | June 16, 2009 7:40 PM
I think i see Steve Gould at about 1:40... :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-zzmCmMVI
Posted by: fbj | June 16, 2009 7:42 PM
You can see Steve Gould at about 1:40... :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-zzmCmMVI
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 16, 2009 8:15 PM
I do not agree with you on the aesthetic appreciation of the religious aspects of ongoing civilization, which could no doubt exist and advance if religion had not been present. I have expressed my views on this quandary several times before as is mt wont, and all to the dismay and opposition to many commenters here.
don't think you're all alone here, though, at least on that point.
Posted by: NelC | June 16, 2009 8:25 PM
Colugo @147: Yes, you're probably right; I'd hate to think that Dawkins could be that petty. That said, if the poster at #120 isn't the Richard Dawkins, why does his name link to Dawkins' website? Is he a troll, out to smear Dawkins' good name?
Posted by: Ichthyic | June 16, 2009 8:29 PM
Is he a troll, out to smear Dawkins' good name?
how, by pointing out that Gould wasn't always the nice, polite gentleman he is often portrayed to be?
I for one not only think it really was Richard, but rather think the idea was not as a slight against Gould, but against the idea that the man was a complete saint.
He wasn't.
Posted by: Heresiarch | June 16, 2009 8:54 PM
Applying sociobiological thinking to human societies is a perilous undertaking. But the sociobiology of the New World Order must be revealed!!
Posted by: Heresiarch | June 16, 2009 8:59 PM
Applying sociobiological thinking to human societies is a perilous undertaking. But the sociobiology of the New World Order must be revealed!!
Posted by: Polyester Mather DD | June 17, 2009 1:38 AM
Having shared PharmGirl' s educational trajectory , I vividly recall asking Steve Gould he why he so adamantly opposed the idea of heritable intelligence :
" My daddy raised me to be a Marxist"
Thank goodness t Gould Sr. .botched the job ?
Had he prevailed, Lewontin & Lewontin would have made a very dull team indeed
Get used to it , PZ-Ideology happens , and to disremember that Marxism was very much a cultural church militant right up to the Soviet demise. As to Gould versus Sagan, though Steve's mind was by no means easy to change , he never dodged a debate, while for all Carl's lip service to evidence , he was not above invoking his own authority in adversarial practice.
Posted by: Dr.Woody
|
June 17, 2009 11:17 AM
I read Gould in SA, and elsewhere, for EVER.
His political agenda was mainly concealed until "The Mismeasure of Man,' which also occasioned the greatest amount of criticism against him. that was the book which refuted Herrnstein & Murray 10 years before they even stated to write that crock of shit, The Bell Curve.
But it is that political conflict that, in my opinion, most clearly defines Gould against the background of mindless, ideologigal idlers...
Posted by: Marion Delgado | June 17, 2009 11:42 AM
I don't believe for a second that the #120 is Richard Dawkins. Please.
Posted by: windy | June 17, 2009 11:43 AM
Well, for me, pictures like that are kind of outweighed by his support for the Nazis.
That's why I said only a tiny bit! At least that kind of goose-stepping was an improvement.
Posted by: John Morales | June 18, 2009 6:42 AM
Regardless, Stephen Jay Gould was a Man of Significance, who left a Legacy.
More significant than most ever are or will be, me included.
I (posthumously) salute him.
Posted by: astrounit | June 18, 2009 7:22 AM
GREAT review PZ! Best I've seen on this number by far.
I was one who was very much provoked and inspired by Gould's essays in Natural History magazine starting in the early to mid-'70s and in his subsequent books. To me, his writing formed an agreeable intellectual alliance (in the arena of biology) with Wilson's and Dawkins' writings: together, I saw them as a fresh wave of acute and vibrant thinking, each brilliant in his own way. In my reading them I never imagined their differing views represented anything other than the clash of ideas that science was supposed to be all about, and that these gentlemen all had greatly contributed to reinvigorating a field that had shown signs of becoming moribund.
But I think it's a bit silly to place such a weight on the digestibility of Gould's writing and to play the comparison game between him and other writers. A matter of MERE STYLE isn't quite the point, is it? (I rather find it amusing how some who charge writers for being a bit overextravagant in getting their message across focus on style as a relevant commodity and buy it through the back door).
When I was a young teenager, the first thing I would do when I received my monthly issue of Natural History was to sit down on the couch and turn directly to his "This View of Life" essay - and even I wasn't so naive as to imagine that title didn't accomodate the OTHER meaning besides that implied from the quote derived from Darwin's great summary, as a "personal view" to me!), and every time I'd be rewarded with a spine-tingling sensation associated with being introduced to and understanding one or more concepts for the first time. His pet ideas ("punctuated equlibrium") and even his means of expression ("overlapping magisteria") were, to this young reader, quite well understood. It didn't matter if his particular ideas were "wrong" or "right" (even though that is an obvious scientific issue. The point was that it made me think.
He wrote personal OPINION essays for Natural History magazine - which isn't a scientific journal, but a something ON THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES that the public could actually tap into.
And that guy could write, and he wrote BRILLIANTLY. He brought elegance and eloquence to the field.
Never mind for a moment whether his ideas happened to be correct or not: he DID make his thoughts emminently understandable.
Heck, if I could understand what he was driving at, and so easily too, even as 16-year old kid, I can't understand why anyone else in the field alleges they can't. (It's bullshit). I think this curious dissonance has to do with what PZ says, and saying it pounds the railroad spike home in one blow:
"...none of those properties — politics, passion, and personality — are necessarily regarded as virtues in the scientific community. We're supposed to be dispassionate, aloof, objective, non-partisan, and there's a prejudice that you're a lesser man (yeah, it's also a male bias) if you step away from the illusion of impartiality."
I think that is absolutely true and is still an important force. Thank you PZ for recognizing this. Too many people still don't realize how injurious illusion of any kind is. This one sets the appreciation of science back. It's quite clear from at least 20% of the comments that it still infests too many minds.
Carl Sagan, in his role as science popularizer, often remarked on the importance of ELEGANCE in communication. Sagan was obviously no slouch as a wordsmith either, and he was also ridiculed for pandering to the public by many of his colleagues, some of them charging that he was more interested in being a showman than in being a scientist.
Today, because of people like Asimov, Sagan, Gould, Wilson, Dawkins and many others...including one, P.Z. Myers, scientists who write for popular consumption have become a fair cottage industry. And it has been dandy. (Pulling for your book PZ!)
BTW, those who so easily place Sagan at the top of the charts might remember that Sagan himself referred to Asimov as, "the greatest explainer of the age".
The silly contest over establishing who is the "best" at it completely robs people of the diversity of style and perspective they require for decent intellectual nutrition. And it gives them another illusion: the idea that something called "scientific consensus" speaks with a single voice. Just like a religious dogma. Why does automatic attitude that still pester science? I think maybe it's because not nearly enough has been written yet about the MECHANISMS of SCIENCE (at least,not in the same popular way): the vast majority of the pop-science books and articles have been focused on "reporting results"...which is basically equivalent to feeding the public the latest edition of stone tablets which Moses provides.
There are many science popularizers who deserve credit for having contributed to the cultivation of public awareness and understanding of science. Popularizers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Nigel Calder and Timothy Ferris (and many other "non-scientists" I consider exceptional but far too many to list here) have performed admirably in that regard. (Personally, I'd MUCH rather read Calder - a "non-scientist" - over, say, Brian Greene - a "scientist" - any time).
I had just started hearing about the brewing turmoil (the "battle royale") between Gould and Wilson when I got whisked away by late '78 onto matters that required my full attention for the next several years, and beyond...so I never got to follow that debate. Most of what I learned about it was acquired from what I've read about it in the aftermath, mostly in bits and pieces.
But I never gotten the impression that the "debate" was all that volatile...until recently.
And I never presumed that any personal animosity or political; persuasion ever played the least bit role...until recently.
This is especially ironic considering have had the great pleasure of knowing both of these men. My memory is graced by their personal input:
Stephen Gould, at his most voluble, with whom I spent a long 4-hours during dinner (at LA's Musso and Franks) and post-dinner conversation over fine pilsners (in 1981, several years before he became ill) in which he waxed magnificently. The man was absolutely extraordinary. The only person who impressed me as much with a similar passion was Carl Sagan.
Wilson, some 20 years later, during a nearly equal period of time at a cocktail party following a particularly enervating debate he participated in during the first "Image and Meaning" conference at MIT in 2001, in which he sought on stage to defray the frivolous (but quite popular amongst the audience) assessments of Susan Sontag, who ragged copiously on how inept science was in understanding the "essential meaaning" of visual material. (To no avail, but man, did that ever rile him...he was just glad to be able to talk with somebody who witnessed that farce and recognize it for what it was).
It is interesting to me that neither of these giants, who each mentioned the other during my conversations with them, ever once alluded to any serious discord: disagreement, yes, but nothing from either of them in the slightest that ever suggested to me that the other had messed with them in any inappropriate way. In fact, each only mentioned the other in a positive and respectful light.
Then comes along a creature that is called a "political scientist" and writes a book...
One more thing: I can personally attest that Gould was absolutely not racist in any way shape or form. (I know this through a personal circumstance, a polite joke was made about it, and the matter was completely defused). Nor had he indicated anywhere in his conversation that he was particularly "Marxist" in his personal political beliefs. Yeah, he was "political". Who the heck isn't? He was just an intellect who demanded the freedom to think, and when he felt suitably comfortable (after a few beers, which might have helped) and did so, it was absolutely mezmerizing.
The politics. The friggin' politics. Man, that stuff is worse than itching powder.
This statement by PZ sums it up best:
"Another powerful attribute that Gould had was that he made science passionate and personal — he was the popularizer of science who had a direct shunt from his heart to his pen. No science writer has equalled him in that, and it was central to his appeal. He made science human and important."
Right on.
Posted by: Cornelius Jon | June 19, 2009 11:38 AM
"And once again we're tripping over the indelible etchings of McCarthyism, where an individual's life's work can be dismissed with the merest whisper of "Yeah, by s/he was a Marxist, wasn't she?"
It's simply the mirror-imaged version of "Yeah, but he was/is a racist, no?".
Personally, as a general default, the label of stigmas are too often used for people to dismiss or critique, when they should pay attention and think instead.
Posted by: Cornelius Jon | June 19, 2009 11:39 AM
"And once again we're tripping over the indelible etchings of McCarthyism, where an individual's life's work can be dismissed with the merest whisper of "Yeah, by s/he was a Marxist, wasn't she?"
It's simply the mirror-imaged version of "Yeah, but he was/is a racist, no?".
Personally, as a general default, the label of stigmas are too often used for people to dismiss or critique, when they should pay attention and think instead.
Posted by: Cornelius Jon | June 19, 2009 11:43 AM
"And once again we're tripping over the indelible etchings of McCarthyism, where an individual's life's work can be dismissed with the merest whisper of "Yeah, by s/he was a Marxist, wasn't she?"
It's simply the mirror-imaged version of "Yeah, but he was/is a racist, no?".
Personally, as a general default, the label of stigmas are too often used for people to dismiss or critique, when they should pay attention and think instead.
Posted by: Anonymous | June 22, 2009 3:27 AM
I don't believe for a second that the #120 is Richard Dawkins. Please.
Some people are ridiculously funny in the way they idealize both Gould and Dawkins.
Dawkins' contributions here have been doubted before, only to be confirmed by PZ, and it's not at all unthinkable that this one is legitimate -- far from it. I suggest that you see what he has to say about it before committing yourself to disbelief for no good reason.
Posted by: Balak | June 26, 2009 1:34 PM
Colugo: "there is nothing inherent in the theoretical approach of evolutionary ecology itself that mandates a particular politics. I think we're in agreement on that."
The problem that Gould was pointing to constantly - and which I strongly agree with - is more in the other direction: that the politics (of ruling classes) have always mandated a particular 'science'... or the use thereof as a prop for the status quo.
Posted by: Miguel Chavez | July 7, 2009 11:45 PM
@ 169 Some people are ridiculously funny in the way they idealize both Gould and Dawkins.
I would say that it is not a matter of idealization, but rather an extension of good faith that neither of these men were petty vindictive pricks. To me the behavior just seems way out of character. Best, Miguel
Posted by: Miguel Chavez | July 7, 2009 11:58 PM
@ 169 Some people are ridiculously funny in the way they idealize both Gould and Dawkins.
I would say that it is not a matter of idealization, but rather an extension of good faith that neither of these men were petty vindictive pricks. To me the behavior just seems way out of character. Best, Miguel
Posted by: Miguel Chavez | July 9, 2009 3:13 AM
In light of the previous discussion, I thought this clip of Dawkins was funny. (As I said, I'm skeptical) Best, Miguel
Posted by: Josh | August 15, 2009 7:24 AM
Whatever Rusthon is, he clearly exposed Gould's dishonesty with his review of the second edition of Mismeasure of Man. Rushton pointed out, quite correctly, that in 1981 Gould had avoided Van Dalen's 1974 literature review of evidence on brain size and IQ. In the 1996 edition Gould simply deleted this section as the MRI evidence was now quite clear & was devastating to Gould's thesis.
Further evidence of Gould's dishonesty was that he avoided mentioning the inconvenient findings of anthropologist John Michael. Gould's allegation that Morton had doctored his skull collection was re-investigated by Michael who found very few errors & those that were found were not in the direction Gould claimed. Michael found Gould was mistaken & that Morton's studies were conducted with integrity. Michael JS 1988. A new look at Morton's craniological research. Current Anthropology 29: 349- 54.
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Posted by: Miguel Chavez | August 18, 2009 4:22 AM
@ Josh #174
John Michael's analysis of Morton's skulls were done as an undergraduate at Macalester College. There is no reason to place his interpretation above that of Steve Gould's, who is a prominent paleontologist and well trained and experienced in fossil analysis. As I understand no one takes Michael's paper as a refutation of Gould's interpretation, other than folks like Sesardic and Rushton, who see every word that Gould pens as a lie or distortion. Best,