2000 Interview with Steven Jay Gould, Harvard University
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- Interviews conducted in March 2000 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences on the topic of Challenges for the New Millennium. Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. See www.aibs.org/me... for additional AIBS conference recordings.
Gould was a legend and a genius and a wonderful human being.
Reading his massive The Structure of Evolutionary Theory at the moment -- it's vast, but very beautifully written. Coming from a philosophical perspective, Gould's rhetoric and prose is rich with fantastic ontological and philosophical insight. You know that a work is worth its weight in gold when it inspires people from other disciplines outside of itself. Gould is a treasure trove in this regard, I think.
I see a man confident in what he knows, modest of his self importance and dedicated to his craft. A great scientist and natural philosopher.
My absolute intellectual hero. I wish I could have met him, but he had died by the time I had even picked up one of his books.
That's one possible conclusion. Their paper was reviewed in the journal Nature, which said "the critique leaves the majority of Gould's work unscathed," since they were unable to measure all the skulls.
The most brilliant scientist of our times
Also, strangely enough, the funniest line from his appearance as himself on The Simpsons, "I'll be honest with your Lisa, I never DID the tests," referring to the so-called angel skeleton, is most UN-like him in reality! He was constantly trying to find novel dimensions of prosaic realities. I wonder how he felt about that joke (it was still a great joke, though).
Then I would suggest you need to research more about the scientific method. Gould's attempts to bend over backwards to broker a ceasefire between religion and reason and his clear political bias in his handling of data are exactly the opposite of what science is meant to be. You may not like Dawkins, but his searing honesty regarding the data even in the face of strong political and social censure is what the system is all about- THAT is science.
i agree - and i think his study of molluscs is correct - and snails evolve very slowly
@KarlDaggerfield No, he just understands to an astonishing degree the place humans occupy in natural history and cosmic evolution.
Quite brilliant. Didn't Gould believe in evolution and the possibility of God??
Would we will ever see another Renaissance person of his calibre. Rest in peace, friend.
It describes it most of the time, which is all anyone could hope for.
@Keysteeze Correct. They could also benefit from studying some basic logic.
Great stuff thanks for the post.
Care to expand on this statement? Why?
Cheap talk. Poor you.
No he wasn't a god believer.
@jeffreydebra1
Gould was a strong opponent of so-called "creationism." He was also a colleague (and friend) of Richard Dawkins. It would therefore be safe to assume that he had no religious beliefs.
Sigh. I suppose its subjective. I massively prefer Dawkins and Dennet to Gould, and agree with Dawkins that punctuated equilibrium was massively oversold. I particularly can't stand Gould's writing (and speaking, viz this video) style, and much prefer Dawkins, who doesn't need to waste pages of ink to get across a simple concept, or show off his classical education by sprinkling his text with latin proverbs. For the record, I have also worked as a molecular biologist.