Gould, Stephenjay (1941–2002)

Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard University paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and educator for more than 30 years, as well as a curator at the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology, was also a monthly columnist for Natural History magazine and a writer admired for his brilliant literary style. His work is read by almost everyone with an interest in science, from layperson to professional. In the last years of his career, Gould also taught biology and evolution at New York University.

Gould published over 20 books in his career and rivals Richard Dawkins in his fame as a popu-larizer of evolution. His Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, a collection of essays from his Natural History column, was published in 1977; a second volume of collected essays from the magazine appeared in 1980 as The Panda's Thumb and won a National Book Award. [Page 336]Among countless other awards Gould received for his writing, his 1989 Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, a book on the evolution of early life based in the study of the fossils of the Cambrian fauna, won an Aventis Prize in 1991 and was a finalist for a 1991 Pulitzer. In his book, he argues that chance was one of the decisive factors in the evolution of life on earth. In Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin (1997), Gould again states an innovative argument, that progress is not the “goal” of evolution, using the apparent disappearance of 400 hitters in baseball as a convenient example.

Gould was also known for a strong sense of social responsibility, opposition to creationism, and long-standing concern with the relationship between science and politics. He was deeply involved in the legislative challenge mounted against the governor of Arkansas's proposal that creation “science” be taught in schools alongside evolution. In the book The Mismeasure of Man (1981), he presents an extended critique of the methods and motivations underlying biological determinism. He considers that the social and economic differences between human groups are independent of biological capabilities such as intelligence. In this book, Gould rejects IQ tests as based on pseudoscientific theories used to defend racist ideologies.

Gould's scientific contributions were also substantial, winning him a Charles Schuchert Award in 1975 and a Paleontological Society Medal in 2002, both awarded by the Paleontological Society. Gould and Niles Eldredge published their theory of punctuated equilibrium, a new interpretation of the fossil record, in 1972. They pointed out that, on the evidence of the fossil record, many species show little change over long periods of time and then are quite suddenly replaced by new species. The earlier view had been that such discontinuities are simply gaps in the fossil record, but Gould and Eldredge argue that the discontinuities reflect the fact that the evolutionary process involves long periods of stability punctuated by periods of rapid change. Nowadays, scientists are still arguing over how often the fossil record shows a punctuated pattern and how such a pattern might arise.

Gould immersed himself in a morphological tradition (that is, an approach to the study of the forms and structure of organisms) stressing that the most significant features of organic life are the similarities that link organism to organism. Adaptation is in many cases secondary or nonexistent. Moves of this nature did not find favor within more conventional Darwinians, especially those working experimentally on rapidly reproducing organisms where natural selection is a vital tool. Gould proposed an “expanded Darwinism” where natural selection and adaptation are undoubtedly important when one is considering organisms in their day-to-day life and microevolution. But as one looks at more long-term matters, it is apparent that other factors, including chance, increasingly come into play.

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