Re: Gould criticism and reviews

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:26:42 -0800, John Harshman
<jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:
John Harshman <jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

AC wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:01:41 GMT,
Tim Tyler <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
r norman wrote:

Gould was recognized by all as an important spokesperson for science
and scientific ideas, and especially for evolutionary ideas.
"Important" - in the sense that he made a lot of noise and created
a lot of confusion.
That's completely unfair. The people that "misunderstand" PE fall into two
categories; those who misunderstand and damned near every other aspect of
evolutionary theory and those who misrepresent it (and Gould) to further
their anti-science rhetoric.

I see absolutely no evidence that Gould created any confusion among those
who have some underlying understanding of evolution and biology. Just
because some snotty little Creationist comes along, invokes a strawman of
PE doesn't mean its Gould's fault.

It's not the creationists being talked about here, but various
evolutionary biologists such as John Maynard Smith. I'm an evolutionary
biologist, and I think that Gould's PE did create some confusion. He
managed to cause confusion about the meaning of "gradual", and about
time scales of evolution, and about what species and speciation are.
Largely this is because he was a bit confused himself.

Mind you, he made important contributions to biology. PE just wasn't one
of them.

I'm unsure about that. Sometimes just raising a controversial topic is a
contribution to the progress of the science. Anyway, Eldredge is the
more theoretical of the two (and Lewontin, who one cannot call confused,
even moreso).

I will go so far as to say that the PE controversy promoted greater
investigation of variation in rates of morphological evolution and in
stasis. For some reason, I have missed Lewontin's contribution to PE
entirely. What publications were you thinking of?

No doubt John was thinking of spandrels at that moment.

Incidentally, Lewontin was probably even more political than Gould (as
was Haldane). No doubt the clarity of vision possessed by people
deeply into evolutionary biological theory carries over to the
political domain since they were all rather far to the proper side of
the political spectrum.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: New Gould Collection Coming Out
    ... That wasn't Lewontin or Gould saying that to you, ... makes it clear it is the biology he primarily objects to. ... There was a sharp exchange between Gould and Pinker (over Gould's ... evolution seemed to me to require the kind of hyper-evolution that was one ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Darwins false dichotomy fallacy.
    ... What is the formally established Theory of Evolution ... not in its first stated form by Darwin in the 19th century. ... and again with molecular biology). ... Gould 2002 and a vast majority of mainstream scholars say you are ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: No distinction between artificial and natural selection - John
    ... Gould may have been an arrogant bastard, ... cultural evolution is evolution by definition. ... There are too many major differences between culture and ... biology for the analogies to be useful:'' ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: A hearing or a reading
    ... Here are some of the questions Dennett could have asked but didn't. ... Can evolution really be reduced to an algorithm or is there a great deal ... > your biology nothing more than glorified plumbing. ... Gould has ever said. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Gould criticism and reviews
    ... The people that "misunderstand" PE fall into two ... I see absolutely no evidence that Gould created any confusion among those ... time scales of evolution, and about what species and speciation are. ... he made important contributions to biology. ...
    (talk.origins)