Talk:Stephen Jay Gould/Archive 2

message: There's nothing about his death in this article besides the year at the beginning.
: There was something on this in the section 'Personal Life'. I have moved this info to the end of that section to make it clearer and added a little bit more information (this info was from an obituary in Melbourne's The Age newspaper on 24 May, 2002, which was a reprint of a Washington Post article). Please remember to sign contributions. --jjron 16:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How did he die? 

message: It says "Gould was twice married; to Deborah Lee in 1965 which ended in divorce, and to artist Rhonda Roland Shearer in 1995. Gould had two children, Jesse and Ethan, by his first marriage, and two stepchildren, Jade and London."
Which wife, if either, was mother of the stepchildren?
Knotwork 07:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stepchildren: which wife? 

message: :Biologist John Maynard Smith has claimed that "Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by nonbiologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists."  He also claimed Gould "is giving nonbiologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory."  (Both quotes appear in Robert Wright's essay The Accidental Creationist).
Summary of some points made (click "View Other Revisions" to see details of this discussion):
* John Maynard Smith is is a biologist and not a popular science writer.
* Gould's work may not be solidly in the biological mainstream, but it's still generally within the purview of legitimate science.
* Robert Wright may be likelier to be the fringe figure here, not Stephen Jay Gould. A quick assay of Mr. Wright's work on the Web shows his positions lie on fairly shakey ground.  For instance, he criticizes Gould for neglecting to notice that there is a general trend from simplicity to complexity in evolution, but this is a trend that is not there and not taken as a mainstream position.
* The power of historical contingency is a major theme in Gould's popular writing, and his most famous professional work (punctuated equilibrium) too.  He's the last person I'd have suspected of being tied to historical determinism.
* Richard Lewontin was the chairman of Gould's department at Harvard, and made the claim, "There is nothing in Marx, Lenin, or Mao that is or can be in contradiction with a particular set of phenomena in the objective world."  This may mean that Lewontin views science and ideology as separate domains, or perhaps mean that science that seems to contradict Marx, Lenin, or Mao is necessarily wrong.
* Gould once used Lewontin's comment in a metaphorical talk on punctuated equilibrium many years ago, which made some view him as sharing Lewontin's political beliefs.  However, Gould has commented that punctuated equilibrium was more Niles' idea than his.  Niles has a different political background than Gould, so with regards to punctuated equilibrium, Gould's politics may in fact be completely irrelevant anyway.
* Gould has been heavily involved in heated debates regarding sociobiology, and has a firm stance in the "anti" camp.  Some have bashed Gould, claiming this "jihad" to be wrong and suggesting that Gould must be tainted by communist beliefs for taking the positions he has.
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It seems to me that some of this would be good to place in the main article--how about that, some actual useful content coming out of mere dialectical wrangling...  :-) --LMS
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The second to last point is inaccurate.  Suspicions that Gould's scienctific opinions are influenced by his politics arise in regards to his views on sociobiology, not punctuated equilibrium.
: Not entirely so.  See his discussion of the Beverly Halstead British Museum cladism controversy (Structure, pp. 984–85).  121a0012 03:48, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commentary on Gould 

message: Can you give a reference for this? --163.1.97.11 18:07, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Dawkins...strongly advocated [Evolutionary Psychology]" 

message: : One reason for such strong antipathies was that Gould presented his ideas as a revolutionary new way of understanding evolution that relegated adaptationism to a much less important position.
Is there a cite for this?  I don't see this in any of Gould's books (of which I have read all but two); indeed, in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory he goes to some length to portray this view of his views as urban legend.  (See the Appendix to chapter 9, pp. 972–1024.)  He points out that punctuated equilibrium (the target of most of the attacks described in this section) makes no claims about microevolutionary mechanism, as it is a theory about how known microevolutionary processes scale in geological time resulting in macroevolution.  As for adaptationism, he reiterates, throughout part II of the Structure, that his claim is only for a greater relative frequency of non-adaptive processes, not that adaptation is unimportant.  His denial is specifically of panadaptationism, not of the importance of  adaptation generally.
Regarding the attack of Maynard Smith, Gould writes:
: Such statements stand in welcome contrast to the frequent grousing of strict Darwinians who often say something like: “but we know all this, and I said so right here in the footnote to page 582 of my 1967 paper; you have stated nothing new; nothing that can alter the practice of the field.“  I will never forget the climactic moment of the Chicago macroevolution meeting [in 1980], when John Maynard Smith rose to make such an ungenerous statement about punctuated equilibrium and macroevolutionary theory in general—and George Oster responded to him, “Yes, John, you may have had the bicycle, but you didn't ride it.”  (Structure, p. 1023)
Gould attributes some of the negative reaction to punctuated equilibrium to a culture clash between paleontologists and neontologists (i.e., those who study living populations).  The original paper was written for a paleontological audience, and uses words like sudden and rapid which mean something very different to paleontologists than they mean to most people.  Some readers (so Gould says) who were unfamiliar with paleontological jargon mistook this to mean that he and Eldredge were making claims for truly saltational evolutionary change, which would be quite a radical notion.
:::: 121a0012 03:35, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on the controversies 

message: Gould also wrote an essay entitled Nonoverlapping Magisteria where he essentially ceded the field of ethics to religion.  I'm not sure I can write a properly impartial summary on this, but I do feel strongly that this essay is significant enough that it, and its consequences, deserve some mention here.  Is anyone willing to rise up to this challenge? Alienus 20:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: More than just that essay; the books Rocks of Ages and The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox, both mentioned in the bibliography, treat the subject in extenso.  I would not for a moment say that he "ceded the field of ethics to religion"; rather, he categorically excluded ethics and religion from the domain of science.  I don't have the philosophy background to write an unbiased article or section on the topic, so I'm not volunteering, but I agree that it's an important idea and should be treated in more detail.  121a0012 04:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for adding that information.  I have some of the background, but neither enough familiarity with nor impartiality towards this material to give a neutral description.  We've got two people agreeing that the topic deserves a place.  Anyone up to writing it? Alienus 19:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonoverlapping Magisteria 

message: The Alexander Agassiz Professors of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard are endowed titles, not chairs, and there are usually several Agassiz Professors at one time.  It is thus not correct to say Gould held the post once occupied by Ernst Mayr.  I've also corrected the bit about his work on land snails, and moved it to the section "Gould as a biologist".131.210.4.95 22:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Agassiz Professorship and land snails

message: *Hello Alienus. I changed the sentence in the "Controversies" section from "exaggerated to the point of falsehood" to "excessively exaggerated." You reverted it because you thought it sounded awkward. But I must plea, I did not do this for stylistic reasons, but for the accuracy of the article. Most of Gould's critics who make the charge say he generally exaggerates the revolutionary importance of his ideas. Few charge that he spreads "falsehoods." I believe that the wording is too strong and thereby mischaracterizes his critics. Miguel Chavez 11 January 2006.
:I should point out that, in his own writing, Gould makes few claims for "the revolutionary importance of his ideas", and in places explicitly disclaims such an attitude.  So without further context as to specific claims that Gould made, and his detractors' counterclaims, it's very difficult to pass judgment on statements of this kind.  If his critics are attacking something he didn't say, then their statements should be discussed in this light.  121a0012 02:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gould "Exaggerated" or "Lied" 

message: Delisted as a GA; article in its present form lacks balance and neutrality; excessive emphasis is placed on public controversy rather than scientific work; some material and quotes appear to be selectively portrayed. Happy to discuss and to contribute until the article may perhaps regain GA or even FA status in the future. All the best, Badgerpatrol 13:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's right mostly.  Gould, in his work, didn't really focus on the intelligence concept.  I appears, to me, that he used specific incidences as representative and argued from there.  
The section on Mismeasure of Man is a mess, it doesn't even state what Gould's conclusions were much less explain his arguments for them, but goes straight into attacks. The reference to the APA here is nonsense, their paper seems generally very consistent with Gould's position, and certainly is not an attack on it even implicitly - Gould's book isn't even mentioned though one of his Science papers is. Given that there is a separate article on this book that repeats these criticisms (similarly in POV manner), I suggest simply deleting the section, unless it essentially makes clear what Gould was saying and the influence that this book has had.Gleng 13:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

text: the length of the MoM section is now about proportionate, in my view. I had never heard of this controversy until I read this page, and I am fairly familiar with SJG's career. From my reading it seems like you might be in a better position to judge however! The structure of the page could do with a bit of fiddling- ie personal life shouldn't be at the bottom. I'll have a look at it myself later hopefully. Badgerpatrol 09:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Delisted as a GA