I just found out that Stephen Jay Gould died last week.  Lung cancer.  
He was 60.  He was a serious paleontologist whose book _Ontogeny and 
Phylogeny_ is a classic. He also wrote many magazine essays in a 
popular vein which he collected in book form under such titles as _The 
Panda's Thumb_ and _Bully for Brontosaurus_.  He will be missed.

17 responses total.

He was the assistant professor (co-taught the course) for my freshman intro
to geology and was always so excited about what he had to say that he talked
too fast to take notes.  I tried to attend a lecture at U of M but had to
listen to it on TV out in the hall at Rackham, it was so popular.  Was he one
of the unfortunate non-smokers who got lung cancer anyway?

He had some type of abdominal cancer about twenty years ago.  This 
supposedly was a new cancer, and I don't know if he smoked.

Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" theories got him in trouble with his 
peers, especially when creationists started quoting him as an anti-
darwinian.  Obviously, whether he's loved by creationists or not has 
nothing to do with the validity of his theories, and he knew that.  But 
I think the attacks stung him nevertheless.  Check out

http://www.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp?
pageLoc=story/106/story_10644_1.html&boardID=40618

[You can't click on that link.  Sorry.  Copy it out or do a copy-and-
paste.]

my husband was telling me some intersting things about his study on duchamp.

it is too bad when folks die.. but
i really wasnt impressed with gould.
was far too arrogant and something about his style just
rubbed me the wrong way.

I felt the same way. He seemed like a wise-ass most of the time to me. Lots
of these science dudes are too full of themselves. 

Like people that knock him?

yeah, exactly! ;)

There was a very, very minor touch of the bdh gene in Gould, I admit.  
He would start off telling you that if you thought you knew what 
happened at the debate between Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry 
Huxley (which, in my case, you probably did), you were probably wrong, 
and then he'd let you in, sometimes rather coyly and circuitously, on 
the results of his research.  But he never seemed to condescend, and he 
always evidently devoted much work and thought to his essays.  I think 
anyone who presumes to explain things to the masses is going to be 
accused of being a smartass.

I think I know the effect you are refering to.  When I'd read Gould's 
books, it would start out sounding like he was going to tell me 
something I didn't know, and then I'd hit the end of the chapter, and 
find I'd learned nothing new.  I know he did some real, innovative 
research, but his popular essays seemed to be aimed at someone else, or 
maybe had too much build up for what they delivered.

I don't think the problem in inevitable.  Jared Diamond is a real 
researcher who has written many fewer books, but his books actually 
deliver something.  Jonathan Weiner isn't himself a scientist, but 
rather a science writer, but his books don't suffer from the Gould 
effect either.

I think his books were aimed at an audience that had barely heard of 
evolution.  What I read in "The Panda's Thumb" seemed mostly to be 
fairly straightforward examples of evolutionary theory applied to 
specific cases.  But because he thought evoluationary theory was so 
important, he hyped things up a lot.  So his books don't really hit the 
target for those who actually have had a long-term interest in the 
field.  Of course, since I didn't read much of his work, my analysis 
may be misguided.  But as far as I could tell, he was a wonderful 
advocate and popularizer of evolutionary theory.  I just didn't need it 
advocated or popularized at me.

As you suggest, I don't think you were his target audience.  You already
understood evolutionary theory and agreed with it.

is he considered a scientist or a philosopher .. or a little of both.

He was a reputable scientist working out of Harvard and the American
Museum of Natural History. His fields were paleontology and evolutionary
biology. He was a recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" award (and lots
others). You can read about him at
http://www.amnh.org/science/bios/gould/?src=h_h

I've found the comments here pretty condescending, for a scientist of his
stature. He is widely knowm for also popularizing science, especially in
relation to evolution, and was very widely admired both as a scientist
and as a public man of science.

I am not doubting his contributions, having always been onterested in
paleontology myself, just on the occasions that I have heard hom speak, he
sounded like something of a wise-ass. That kind of turned me off. Since you
seem to know more about him, Rane, what were his major contributions besides
trying to popularise science? 

His books and selections of some of his other mostly didactic publications
are listed at ttp://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/gould/biblio.html

His particular scientific empirical specialty was about the evolution of
West Indian land snails. He got a lot of mileage out of those snails 8^}.  

I read a lot of his articles in Natural History. They were often rather
cerebral and not easy reading (I am still puzzling over his argument about
spandrels), but there was always fascinating information and
interpretation in them. I also read his book on the Burgess Shale
("Wonderful Life"). There are arguments about his interpretation of that
suite of fossils, but that's not new in science.

I never heard him lecture. However his articles and books are not about
himself, and I would not expect his lectures to be. If he was a
"wise-ass", well, we all have our personality quirks. Which is more
important, his contributions or his quirks?

I've heard him lecture, and I didn't think he was a wise-ass.

It wasn't a lecture that i heard, but parts of an interview. And we may well
have different ideas of what a wise-ass is. I recall reading a little bit
about his "punctuated equilibrium" stuff, and although I didn't find it
convincing, I did find it interesting. 

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss