Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002)

Úgy vagyok az evolúcióval, hogy hiszem, és alapvetően értem is. De aztán megpróbálom elmagyarázni a gyerekeimnek, és rájövök, hogy nem is annyira értem. Úgyhogy keresek egy könyvet a témában, amit az én szellemi színvonalamra kalibráltak, és ha ennek a könyvnek a címében szerepel a „panda” szó, az mondjuk egy erős érv a kiválasztása mellett. Mert a panda cuki. És most már azt is tudom, hogy miben hasonlít Adyra: neki is hat ujja van. Illetve Ady hatodik show more ujját a bába eltávolította, a panda viszont megtartotta a magáét. Sőt, direkt azért növesztette, mert kellett neki a bambuszhajtások leszedegetésére, és egyszerűbb volt a csukló szezámcsontjából hatodik ujjat képezni, mint a már meglévő öt ujja egyikét szembe fordítani a többivel. Így lett a pandának hat ujja. (Viszont hogy miért fekete-fehér, azt továbbra sem tudom.)

Stephen Jay Gould esszékötete kiválóan alkalmasnak bizonyult a fenn említett célra. Elképesztően logikusan építi egymásra írásait, sőt, humora is van: amikor a mélytengeri horgászhal hímjével kapcsolatban elkezd a freudi elfojtott vágyakról mélázni, hangosan felkacagtam. Tele van érdekes állatokkal, de ez csak természetes, hisz egy evolúcióról szóló könyv érdekes állatok nélkül olyan, mint a Balaton szabadstrand nélkül. Úgyhogy van itt hiéna, zebra, tyúk fogakkal, meg amit akartok. Fő irányvonala mindazonáltal az, hogy tisztázza a darwinizmussal kapcsolatos elterjedt tévhiteket vagy leegyszerűsítéseket. Következésképpen ha elolvasná az értékelésemet, annál a résznél, hogy a panda „direkt növesztette” a hatodik ujját, tutira rosszallóan cöcögne, mert bizony a leggyakoribb tévképzet az evolúcióval kapcsolatban éppen az, hogy célszerűségre törekszik. Ezzel szemben a valóság az, hogy az evolúció nem törekszik semmire, nincs terve, nem lebeg előtte egy ún. „végső cél”, és pláne nem érdekli a „faj érdeke”. Hanem végtelen számú egyéni variációt kínál fel, amiből aztán a legsikeresebbek több utódot nemzenek, és ez generációk végtelen során keresztül átalakítja a faj képét is. Épp ezért az evolúcióbiológust nem a „tökéletes” érdekli, hanem a különös, az extrém, és az, ami olyan hatást kelt, mint egy sufnituning zsiguli. Tudatosul benne persze, mily tökéletes a sirály szárnyának íve, de azzal sok dolga nincs – inkább leköti a panda hüvelykujja, ami nem is hüvelykujj igazán, sőt, ujjnak is csak félve nevezhetjük, aztán mégis ott fityeg, pedig nem is kéne ott fityegnie. show less

This is the first collection of Stephen Jay Gould's essays on evolutionary science from Natural History Magazine, featuring pieces originally published in the 1970s.

They are, naturally, very dated, and I wasn't certain for a while whether they would still be worth reading for that reason. (Indeed, in one essay on human evolution, Gould suggests that the field was moving so fast the essay might be out of date by the time it was published, never mind five decades later.) Honestly, though, show more there's something in their very datedness that itself helped to give me an interesting and worthwhile shift in perspective. It was, for instance, something of a jolt to see Gould talking about this new idea of plate tectonics and how it so quickly come to be accepted over the previous decade. I grew up with that idea being taught to me as if it were ancient scientific wisdom, but I'd already been born when Gould was writing this. Between that and also realizing that he was writing only 120 years after On the Origin of Species and only a few decades into the firm and widespread acceptance in science of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, it really brought home to me just how short a timespan and how few links in the chain of human discovery lie between me, sitting here in 2025, and the days when people were arguing over whether or not Adam and Eve had contained within them the tiny homunculi of every subsequent human generation. (Which, yes, was a real theory that was taken seriously, and which Gould talks about in one of these essays.)

So, that was interesting. And so were the essays, overall, just as I've found all the others of his I've read.

There are certain repeating themes here. One is that it's wrong to regard evolution as a process of life climbing an inevitable ladder of progress, or even the idea of "progress" as a thing in evolution at all. Which is point worth hammering home, as misconceptions on this score are still rampant among the public and cause a lot of serious misunderstanding. Another is that science itself is not all climbing ladders of inevitable progress, either, as scientists are always working within their own cultural contexts and hampered by their own biases. He describes, for example a number of people trying very hard to reach for rational explanations, but whose conclusions were distorted by operating within a world of Biblical literalism. Gould has a lot of sympathy and often real respect for these folks, but he is relentless in his criticism of those using bad scientific reasoning to justify racism or to paint current social structures as inevitable and right (something that always seems to end up with the guy doing the justifying sitting at the top of the hierarchy). And in those criticisms, both in terms of scientific reasoning and simple humanity, he seems not dated at all, but, indeed, if anything a bit ahead of his time. show less

A fun little book that will come in very handy again in about 974 years’ time (or perhaps 973…). Gould goes through everything you need to know about why calendars are complicated to make and always arbitrary in nature, and why there is thus nothing special about year-numbers that are multiples of a thousand, and also tells us a good deal about how some humans (mostly Christians) have attached a special significance to them. He determinedly refuses to take a position on whether the show more century will end at the end of 1999 or of 2000, though. show less

Stephen Jay Gould takes on everyone who's ever tried to quantify human intelligence with a simple numerical value, be it measuring skull capacities or the Stanford-Binet "intelligence quotient." It's an illuminating look at how easy it is to blind yourself. It's a nuanced critique of objectivity from someone who (unlike many who critique objectivity) is sympathetic to the overall epistemology of science. As he states it, "I criticize the myth that science itself is an objective enterprise, show more done properly only when scientists can shuck the constraints of their culture and view the world as it really is" (53). His gist is that science will always be a culturally embedded enterprise, so rather than deny that fact, scientists should work to understand their biases, because, ideally, science can "be a powerful agent for questioning and even overturning the assumptions that nurture it" (55).

His discussion of Samuel George Morton, who measured over one thousand skulls in order to prove black mental inferiority, is fascinating (see pp. 83-104). Morton was an adherent to polygeny, the theory that the races of man have separate origins, which allows one to ethically endorse all sorts of racist practices. He fudged his analysis to prove his point, but could not have done so consciously, because he published his raw data along with his work, easily allowing anyone to discover the fudging. Whenever he miscalculated in favor of his own theories, he never double-checked, because he "knew" that he was right.

Gould shows how this kind of thing happens again and again-- but offers the promise that good science, well conducted, will root out this kind of bias, hopefully sooner rather than later. It's easy to laugh at some of the ridiculous judgments made in the name of "science"... until you realize that this kind of science has informed the slavery debate, immigration policy, school reform, and many other things with massively real consequences for real people. Hopefully we can console ourselves with the belief that most of these people probably would have been racists anyway (!); science was just a convenient crutch to lean on. show less