Blogger News Item

Naturalist

It was worth waiting an extra day for the British obituaries of Stephen Jay Gould.

In The Guardian, Steve Jones hits a wonderful tone of fond respect and acute scientific criticism: “Scientifically, he was — in the eyes of us ‘creeps’ at least — a failure, but a heroic one, in the sense that Columbus failed to find India. In science, failures can be heroes, too – think of Newton after relativity.”

And in The Independent Gabriel Dover argues the pro-punctuated equilibrium case and notes, “He was considered arrogant by some but that is as nothing compared to the tolerance of human differences that formed his personal take on humanness. As has been said of the composer Varèse, it was not so much that he was ahead of his time, but that most people are behind theirs.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *