RIP: Stephen Jay Gould

gdyas writes: " Reuters reports that famed paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has died today at age 60 of cancer. Famous for his many essays on natural history, modifications to Darwin's theories, and as the winner of the American Book Award for "The Mismeasure of Man", a history of intelligence testing, Gould was and remains a profound influence on biology." CNN also has a piece on him.

Comments

And most importantly he was on the Simpsons

[Dynedain]

He starred in the episode where a fossilized angel skeleton is found.

The world is a little darker

[Walter Wart]

Stephen Gould was that rarest of beasts - a cultured scientist who could make difficult, advanced concepts easy to grasp. He had a brilliant intellect, a witty and gentle sense of humor and an inspired gift for teaching and writing.

Science, in fact all human culture is much poorer today. Sophia (the Hebrew spirit of wisdom) has turned her face from us. Why did he leave us so soon when we still need him to fight the good fight against igorance and superstition? When will we see one like him again?

Re:The world is a little darker

[Walter Wart]

For those who aren't familiar with his work, Dr. Gould did more than write "The Mismeasure of Man" although that was an excellent piece of work.

He was also Professor of Biology, Geology and History of Science at Harvard. For many years he wrote a wide-ranging and fascinating column, "This View of Life", in Natural History magazine. He was tireless in his efforts at promoting the teaching of science in the public schools and became the bane of the so-to-speak Scientific Creationists.

And that is ignoring his greatest accomplishments. He was one of the great lights of evolutionary biology in the 20th century. His work with Eldredge (Eldridge?) on punctuated equilibrium led to some of the most fertile research on the rates and methods by which change happens in the natural world.

Again, he will be missed.

Another (Longer) Obit

[jhiv]

There is longer and more complete obituary at the New York Times.

What kind of God...

[scubacuda]

...would let a renowned evolutionist DIE?

Great man...

[mclove]

Having met him briefly (signed my copy of "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" and joked to me about dollars per pound and how dull it was) and sat in on many of his lectures, I have to say he was a fascinating guy. His class was often as amusingly off-topic as his Natural History articles, but he could talk about almost anything and make it sound interesting. And he's just about the only science geek to ever get his own Simpsons character... He'll be missed at Harvard, anyway; in a year when we've already lost half a dozen stellar faculty members to Princeton and Columbia, this was the last thing we needed now.

MC Hawking's Tribute

[GuyMannDude]

I think the legendary gangsta rapper MC Hawking said it best in F*ck The Creationists

:

Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.

GMD

He made a good/bad point

[zubernerd]

--"Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information," Gould wrote in his 1977 book "Ever Since Darwin." "It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors."-- As a scientist I didn't know finding "objective information" was such a heartless thing... That explains my lack of a heartbeat. Actually Science is both the pursuit of "objective information" and then doing something with it... like finding new ideas, or see a pattern no one ever saw before. With that said, the man may be dead; but his ideas life on in the meme pool.

Re:He made a good/bad point

[L-Train8]

"Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information," Gould wrote in his 1977 book "Ever Since Darwin." "It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors."

I believe he wrote that in response to creationists' arguments that scientist were biased, and because of that, evolution is a flawed concept. His point was that of course scientists have opinions and beliefs, and this is a good and necessary thing.

He finished his book!

[possible]

Gould has been sick for a long time. He managed to stay alive long enough to see published his magnum opus, "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory."

From the recent interview with Gould (conducted March 15, 2002):

Now, Mr. Gould is trying to write himself into the illustrious annals of scientific history. This month, Harvard University Press is publishing his 1,464-page magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, a work 20 years in the making that seeks nothing less than to reformulate Darwin's theory of evolution.

my eyes just bugged out.

[RestiffBard]

for a guy that studied snails he was the best there was at explaining the unintelligble to the masses. I own several of his books and read them like most folks read Grisham.

Wherever he is now I'm certain he's explaining something to someone.

God: so how did I do that thing with the platypus again?
Stephen: its easy. lets use baseball as an example...

The Median is not the Message

[Dogun]

He pulled this one on his buddies back in the Eighties. Read "The Median is not the Message" - wonderful essay - wherein he reveals that though the median amount of time someone has left to live with abdominal cancer is a mere 9 months, he has survived more than 10 years - The Median is Not the Message.

Unfortunately, something tells me he really did bite it this time. Rest well, statistician, evolver. We understand punctuated equilibreum.

RIP: SJ Gould

[Ynefel]

Steven was diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer in 1982. Life expectancy was just 8 months after diagnosis of this form of cancer. Steven wrote a nice little essay entitled " The Median is Not the Message" to show how to treat that type of statistics, and to demonstrate that your attitude can make all the difference...

http://www.cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html

SJG quote

[DrMegaVolt]

"Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival." --Stephen Jay Gould

Some of the other books are interesting too....

[os2fan]

Like the "flamingo's smile".

He did studies on Disney characters to show that our affection with them is similar to our affection to small children: Goofy, who head occupies as much of his height as an adult, attracts less affection than Mickey. This is true even when both play adult roles. Mickey has a wife and three kids.

Another area he looked at is that most animals have the same number of heart-beats: that is, the length of the life and the heart beats scale at the same ratios. Humans have a longer life, about three times an animal of that size.

The column-books like this (and nearly all of Martin Gardner's) are ideal reading on the bus, as it gives you a new story every day :)

In punctuated equalibrium, one day, it's there, the next it's not. Rest in peace, Stephen. You deserve it.

Stephen Jay Gould: An Appreciation

[Anonymous Coward]

by Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University

Stephen Jay Gould is dead. He died Monday morning of cancer. In his life, he was many things: a Harvard professor, a baseball fanatic, an enthusiastic singer of oratorio, an outstanding evolutionist, and above all the greatest science writer of his generation. Young people of all ages, in America and elsewhere, have grow up on Gould's scintillating monthly essays, published without break for twenty-five years, in the magazine Natural History. They have been charmed and intrigued and stimulated and excited. They have themselves been turned to science, realizing that there is simply nothing more worthwhile than trying to puzzle out the mysteries of the creation around and within us, and that the true miracle of life is that grubby little primates like us humans can find out so much about the universe and its inhabitants.

Steve Gould was born in 1941, so he died just past 60. This is far too young, but for twenty years he was living on borrowed time. Just past the age of 40, Gould had fallen sick with a particularly virulent form of stomach cancer, and typical of everything he did in life he fought back and conquered. I knew him quite well. We had in 1981 been fellow witnesses for the ACLU in a successful fight in Arkansas to push back a Creationist law - a law insisting that the children of the state be taught Genesis taken literally alongside the truths that we are descended, by a slow natural process, ultimately from blobs, up through fish, reptiles and finally (our most recent ancestors) from ape-like creatures. At the trial, Gould had been (to put matters politely) somewhat on the chubby side, and a year later he was but a wraith. Yet his spirit was unchanged, and all he wanted to do was to argue and discuss and push the conversation forward. He was uninterested in himself and his health except as an object of science.

But although Gould has gone too soon, he has gone with his life fulfilled. Earlier this month, he published the last and final collection of his essays. The title I Have Landed was taken from the diary of his immigrant grandfather, as he arrived at Ellis Island. Now, alas, the title refers also to Gould's own fate. Although the word "alas" is surely misplaced. Gould has truly landed, but what a flight! For month in and month out, as he explored the mysteries of nature, he delighted us with poetry in prose. Why is it that the zebra is striped, and should we think of it as a black animal with white stripes or a white animal with black stripes? In how many different ways do animals get from A to B, and why is it that no one seems to have invented the wheel? What did the eminent, nineteenth-century morphologist E Ray Lankester get up to when he took his frequent but unreported trips to Paris? How did the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin get mixed up in the Piltdown Hoax, and did he know more about the bogus ape-man than he should have done? Why are there no 400 hitters today, and will the Red Sox ever again win the World Series?

Even more important than his essays, in March Gould published his magnum opus: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Mixing history with science, science with literature, literature with religion, and much more, for over 1400 pages Gould explained the theory for which he is rightly known as a scientist - "punctuated equilibrium," the belief that the course of fossil history is not smooth and regular but jerky and contingent and unpredictable. The jury is still out on whether his ideas will prove of truly lasting value, but this one can say. No one, for the past thirty years, has been as successful as Stephen Jay Gould in making professional evolutionists rethink and reexamine their dearly held premises. As often is the case, the gad-fly was not always welcomed but he was always respected.

I am proud to have known Steve Gould and to think that we were friends. But I want to end my appreciation on another note. For all his great achievements and successes, these were not the most important things in the life of Stephen Jay Gould. More significant by far was the fact that he never put pen to paper - actually, he wrote everything on the same, old-fashioned, manual typewriter - without a burning moral concern. His essays and books were always powered by a hatred of dishonesty and prejudice and hypocrisy. Gould wrote eloquently against racism and sexism and every other vile "ism" in the book. And more significant by far is what Gould represented and was able to achieve. He was rightly proud that he came from a humble background. His dad was a court reporter. He was even more proud that he (although not a formal believer) came from a Jewish family that had come to the New World in search of a better life for themselves and their children. Gould's favourite line was the exclamation of an aged relative on hearing his intended profession was paleontology. "And that's a job for a nice Jewish boy?!" That a nice Jewish boy was able to become a Harvard professor, the recipient of over a hundred honorary degrees, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and much more, tells us something good about the country to which his ancestors set sail.

Harsh criticism of Gould

[SiliconEntity]

It is customary not to speak ill of the dead, but it may be helpful to see some balance to the high praises of Gould being sung here.

A letter in the New York Review of Books by two researchers at the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology begins:

John Maynard Smith, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, recently summarized in the NYRB the sharply conflicting assessments of Stephen Jay Gould: "Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists 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." (NYRB, Nov. 30th 1995, p. 46). No one can take any pleasure in the evident pain Gould is experiencing now that his actual standing within the community of professional evolutionary biologists is finally becoming more widely known. If what was a stake was solely one man's self-regard, common decency would preclude comment.

But as Maynard Smith points out, more is at stake. Gould "is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory" -- or as Ernst Mayr says of Gould and his small group of allies -- they "quite conspicuously misrepresent the views of [biology's] leading spokesmen."[1] Indeed, although Gould characterizes his critics as "anonymous" and "a tiny coterie," nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with.[2] The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism -- so properly are we all -- it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know.

And goes on to close,

Now, given the foregoing, one is left with the puzzle of why Gould so customarily reverses the truth in his writing. We suggest that the best way to grasp the nature of Gould's writings is to recognize them as one of the most formidable bodies of fiction to be produced in recent American letters. Gould brilliantly works a number of literary devices to construct a fictional "Gould" as the protagonist of his essays and to construct a world of "evolutionary biology" every bit as imaginary and plausible as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Most of the elements of Gould's writing make no sense if they are interpreted as an honest attempt to communicate about science (e.g., why would he characterize so many researchers as saying the opposite of what they actually do) but come sharply into focus when understood as necessary components of a world constructed for the fictional "Gould" to have heroic fantasy adventures in -- adventures during which the admirable character of "Gould" can be slowly revealed.

In the course of these engaging tales, Gould the author introduces us to a gallery of vivid villains and ethnicities, such as "adaptationists," "Dawkins" and the soulless "hyperreductionists" with their vivisectionist appetites, "Wilson" and the sinister "sociobiologists", "biological determinists," and most recently, the holy-rolling "Darwinian fundamentalists," including "Maynard Smith" with his "simplistic dogmatism," "Dennett," "evolutionary psychologists," and "Robert Wright." "Gould" the protagonist is a much loved character (and not just in our household) who reveals himself to be learned, subtle, open-minded, tolerant, funny, gracious to his opponents, a tireless adversary of cultural prejudice, able to swim upstream against popular opinion with unflinching moral courage, able to pierce the surface appearances that capture others, and indeed to be not only the most brilliant innovator in biology since Darwin, but more importantly to be the voice of humane reason against the forces of ignorance, passion, incuriousity, and injustice. The author Gould, not least because he labors to beguile his audience into confusing his fictional targets with actual people and fields, is sadly none of these things.

Anyone in Gould's position is bound to attract criticism, but lay people may not be aware of the tremendous divisions within the evolutionary community which produced such negative responses to Gould.

Re:Harsh criticism of Gould

[gdyas]

It is customary not to speak ill of the dead, but ...

But you're going to do it anyway because you like playing devil's advocate, right?

There's a time and place for everything, and those who are interested in evolutionary theory know where the chinks in Gould's armor are. But chosing today to pick his nits is like bashing Darwin for getting parts of natural selection all screwed up only to ignore the larger grandeur of his contributions.

So please, lay off.

Re:Harsh criticism of Gould

[blamanj]

It should be noted that the authors of the letter quoted above were not penning an unbiased critique of Gould, they had an axe to grind.

Specifically, Gould had criticized their book, The Adapted Mind, in an earlier NYRB essay.

Those familiar with NYRB know that once someone's pet theory has been criticized, the letter writing often takes the form of personal attacks and accusations, so I'd take the above with a grain of salt.

Re:Harsh criticism of Gould

[NearlyHeadless]

For interesting reading about Gould and how he was regarded in his field, see The Gould Files

There are some critical reviews of The Mismeasure of Man:

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/jensen-gould- fossils

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/psycho logy/IQ/carroll-gould.html

Dawkins' views

[jbennetto]

You're misunderstanding Dawkins. Neither he nor (AFAIK) any serious evolutionary scientist claims that evolution is a justification for social conservatism. There's a big difference between saying we are selfish (a la The Selfish Gene) and that we should be selfish.

Social Darwinism is little more than a straw man. They certainly had differences, but this wasn't one of them.

Re:Dawkins' views

[Lemmy Caution]

The gist of Gould's dissatisfaction with this is that it is all too teleological. Genes don't want anything. It's true the genes are the primary medium of information about the structure of organisms, and after that, Selection (among other things, including meteors and the like) Happens. But too much of story of the 'ultras' - at least the somewhat-unfair caricature of the ultras, which is still useful for making the point - depends on attributing to genes a sort of goal, which is sort of like saying that shingles "want" to keep rain of our heads, or even that shingles keep rains off our heads because they "want" to get put on roofs. It's a bit anthropomorphic

Gould: The millenium started on Jan 1, 2000

[mikosullivan]

Gould was one of the most prominent people in the scientific community to defend the idea that the millenium started on Jan 1, 2000. He agreed with the idea that the concept of the "millenium" was an arbitrary one and that we were free to decide when our milleniums start. I cited him in a lot of those annoying "when does the millenium start" conversations we all had to endure during that time.

Why I submitted this

[gdyas]

With the exception of his most recent 2-3 books, I've read everything he's written, most of it while I was in high school. I didn't agree with all of it, but it was wonderful to explore these ideas, to look at the evidence for things, and try to construct theories that might explain them. Between Gould & Richard Dawkins I learned, before I knew if I wanted to be a scientist, what science was like and how it could answer powerful questions about biology, which I loved.

So I read this in the news this morning, and I go around the lab asking people -- "You know who Stephen Jay Gould is?" -- and to my surprise, none of the 6 or so people I asked, scientists all, knew. Sigh. I understand that many scientists are too preoccupied with their work to read about evolutionary theory, but still. It's a pity. So I figured I'd post it here, have a little nerd wake for those of us who still read the giants of biology, because one of the giants fell this morning.

Thanks to his writing I learned what I wanted to do with my life. About a decade of working in molecular biology later, I'm still not sure I agree 100% on some of his ideas, but they're clear, powerful, and worthy of deep study. So thanks, Dr. Gould.

Schitterende oogemblik

[theolein]

This was a Dutch TV series of documentaries on 5 scientists back in the early 90's. One of them was Stephan Gould. In the final show, the five scientists had a roundtable discussion and the subject got around to AI, which was one of the scientists strengths, and who was claiming that AI could replace humans and we wouldn't know it or be able to differentiate between it and life. Stephan Gould asked him if he had ever had a dog.

Ironic

[Cyberllama]

The local fox station airs two episodes of the Simpsons per day, as I'm sure many local fox affiliates do. Today they aired "Lisa the Skeptic" in which Gould was a guest star. Very strange timing.

non-humorous irony

[cr@ckwhore]

Irony is usually humorous in nature, although I believe Mr. Gould was at peace with dying from cancer, given that cancer is one of nature's many ways of balancing species population. Irony? Perhaps.

Re:non-humorous irony

[Tom Davies]

Cancer is not "one of nature's many ways of balancing species population".

Cancer is a failure of the mechanisms which control cell division. From an evolutionary perspective our bodies have evolved many mechanisms to stop cancer from occurring, because the genes for these mechanisms increased the probability that the body they were in would survive to reproduce.

These will never be perfect, because random events can defeat these mechanisms, but there is no 'nature' which 'balances' species.

Tom

Re:We can hope all we want he will RIP but...

[junkgrep]

Your post should help put to rest the myth that the strongly religious are necessarily more ethical or compassionate.

I'm sorry I never met him

[ColGraff]

Damnit. You know, I'd heard of Gould before, never really cared one way or the other about him. I didn't even realize the significance of Gould on that Simpsons episode. But now, reading all these articles on CNN, NYtimes, even /. posts - I really regret the fact I'll never have the chance to take a class taught by this man, or have a one-in-a-million chance to run into him on the street. Why the hell is it that death seems to be the most effective form of publicity for the most interesting people?

Re:I'm sorry I never met him

[mithras the prophet]

You could read one of his books. That's a wonderful way to meet him, so to speak.

A big loss

[SimJockey]

Wow, such a shame he is gone. Have been reading his books for over 10 years, and he is the best I have ever seen at conveying difficult scientific concepts simply. I've often thought that as our society moves towards trusting more and more complex science and technology, the need for informed scientists and engineers who can clearly convey new ideas to the public increases substantially. Despite some cynics who contend the contrary, I believe that the public wants to be informed and engaged in technological decision making. Sadly, I have seen few who can do this well and SJ Gould was one of them.

Rest in peace Mr. Gould, you truly inspired some of the direction I've taken in my life.

Re:Where there is death, there is hope.

[wytcld]

Gould was important because his theory of punctuated evolution reconciled evolutionary theory with Marxist revolutionary theory. The previous attempt to bring Marx and Darwin together by the Soviet "scientist" Lysenko, had been an embarrassing failure.

Oh my, now Gould has reconciled the far right with evolution (miracle of miracles) by driving them to find common cause with incremental evolutionists against his punctuated equalibrium.

Where that goes far wrong, though, is in thinking that Gould believed evolution had anything to do with human society (aside from society being made up of animals who are a product of evolution). His analysis of why Dawkins claims for memes just don't work as an extension of evolutionary theory specifically denies that evolutionary explanations apply within human cultures except as an awkward metaphor (since the types of constraints on the propogation of genes don't apply to memes, the algorithms don't, either). Where his opposition was using metaphors badly and losely, he was insisting on the strict logical formalisms which science requires. So it may be true that the right wing should hate him for pulling the rug out from under social Darwinism; but he was hardly proposing punctuated equilibrium as the model for socialist revolution!
___

Mayr shouldn't talk

[Jonathan]

Ernst Mayr is no position to attack Gould seeing how Mayr himself likes to attack (with much more heat than light) molecular evolutionists like Carl Woese. I think the problem is that paleontologists like Gould, zoologists like Dawkins, Smith, and Mayr, and molecular evolutionists like Woese talk three different languages and there is a tendency to assume that all the "important" stuff happens at one's own level of study. A true understanding of evolution must consider all levels of information.

one of my favorite atheists.

[Artifex]

As a Christian who doesn't buy Creationism (I believe God created the universe, but "creationism" is hardly the same thing - it takes a literal interpretation of the Bible and adds very nutty presuppositions to make modern ideas about the past sound plausible to people who want to stay blind to science - as if faith can stay faith even if it requires pseudoscience to be bolstered), Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Stephen Hawking have been the contemporary scientists that I have looked up to in order to further my understanding of the physical world. I was hoping to hear live lectures by them all one day, but now only Hawking is left.

Can anyone name some scientists of the newest generation worth watching, now?

p.s. Ironically, I was watching a showb about Charles Darwin on PBS a night or two ago (Darwin's Diary?), and Gould was on. I said to myself, "Wow! He's still around." Sigh.

My plane ride with SJG

[Phil Karn]

I happened to sit next to Stephen Jay Gould on a flight from San Diego to Minneapolis in March 2001. He seemed perfectly healthy, albeit showing his age, so I was quite surprised to see his obituary today.

After I introduced myself, I told him how much I had enjoyed his guest appearance on The Simpsons. He laughed and said that he still got occasional $20-$30 checks from Fox for residuals for appearing on that show. Not bad for just a few minutes' work, he said.

Over the Grand Canyon, he had his nose pressed to the window. I couldn't resist. "You know, all that was carved out in just a few days by the Great Flood", I said. He grinned broadly and joined in. "Yeah, just imagine all that water! Wow! Must have been quite a sight!" I kept it going. "Yeah! All that water just appeared out of nowhere, did all that -- but only that -- and just vanished!"

We talked much of the rest of the flight. He seemed as interested in my work as I was in his. It was definitely one of the more memorable plane rides I've ever had. He's always been one of my heroes for his good-natured ability to stand up to the forces of ignorance and superstition, and having had the chance to talk with him personalizes the great loss that the forces of reason suffered today.