Nov 16, · Stephen J Gould Essay. Stephen J Gould was a leading evolutionary biologist on the faculties of Harvard and New York University. In , we was diagnosed with abdominal mesothelioma and found out through his research into the disease that the median life span for someone with abdominal mesothelioma was 8 months by Stephen Jay Gould My life has recently intersected, in a most personal way, two of Mark Twain's famous quips. One I shall defer to the end of this essay. The other (sometimes attributed to Disraeli), identifies three species of mendacity, each worse than the one before - lies, lies, and statistics Free Stephen Jay Gould Essays and Papers The Pandas Thumb -- Stephen Jay Gould. Gould is able to put what he writes about in words that are easy to understand Analysis Of Stephen Jay Gould 'Biology In Context'. Pledged: Dakota Frencl Biology in Context, Book
Stephen Jay Gould Essays | blogger.com
He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. InGould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York Universityafter which he divided his time teaching between there and Harvard. Gould's most significant contribution to evolutionary biology was the theory of punctuated equilibrium [2] developed with Niles Eldredge in The theory was contrasted against phyletic gradualismthe popular idea that evolutionary change is marked by a pattern of smooth and continuous change in the fossil record.
Most of Gould's empirical research was based on the land snail genera Poecilozonites and Cerion. He also made important contributions to evolutionary developmental biologyreceiving broad professional stephen jay gould essays for his book Ontogeny and Phylogeny.
He campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two distinct fields or " non-overlapping magisteria " whose authorities stephen jay gould essays not overlap. Gould was known by the general public mainly for his popular essays in Natural History magazine, [7] and his numerous books written for both the specialist and non-specialist.
In Aprilthe US Library of Congress named him a " Living Legend ". Stephen Jay Gould was born in QueensNew Yorkon September 10, His father Leonard was a court stenographer and a World War II veteran in the United States Navy. His mother Eleanor was an artist, whose parents were Jewish immigrants living and working in the city's Garment District. When Gould was five years old his father took him to the Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural Historywhere he first encountered Tyrannosaurus rex.
Raised in a secular Jewish home, stephen jay gould essays, Gould did not formally practice religion and preferred to be called an agnostic. If you absolutely forced me to bet on the existence of a conventional anthropomorphic deity, of course I'd bet no. But, basically, Huxley was right when he said that agnosticism is the only honorable position because we really cannot know. And that's right. I'd be real surprised if there turned out to be a conventional God. Though he "had been brought up by a Marxist father" [16] he stated that his father's politics were "very different" from his own.
Wright Mills ' The Power Elite and the political writings of Noam Chomsky. While attending Antioch College in the early s, Gould was active in the civil rights movement and often campaigned for social justice. Gould continued these demonstrations until the policy was revoked. Interspersed throughout his scientific essays for Natural History magazine, Gould frequently referred to his nonscientific interests and pastimes. As a boy he collected baseball cards and remained an avid New York Yankees fan throughout his life.
He often traveled to Europe, and spoke French, Stephen jay gould essays, Russian, and Italian. He sometimes alluded ruefully to his tendency to put on weight. Gould married artist Deborah Lee on October 3, In July Gould was diagnosed with peritoneal mesotheliomaa deadly form of cancer affecting the abdominal lining the peritoneum.
This cancer is frequently found in people who have ingested or inhaled asbestos fibers, a mineral which was used in the construction of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, stephen jay gould essays. Gould was also an advocate of medical cannabis. When undergoing his cancer treatments he smoked marijuana to help alleviate the long periods of intense and uncontrollable nausea.
According to Gould, the drug had a "most important effect" on his eventual recovery. He later complained that he could not understand how "any humane person would withhold such a beneficial substance from people in such great need simply because others use it for different purposes. In Februarya 3-centimetre 1.
Gould died 10 weeks later on May 20,from a metastatic adenocarcinoma of the lungan aggressive form of cancer which had already spread to his brain, liver, and stephen jay gould essays. Gould began his higher education at Antioch Collegegraduating with a double major in geology and philosophy in Instephen jay gould essays, Harvard promoted him to professor of geology and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the institution's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
InHarvard awarded him the title of Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology. That same year, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. The AAAS news stephen jay gould essays cited his "numerous contributions to both scientific progress and the public understanding of science.
InGould was elected into the body of the National Academy of Sciences. Through — Gould was Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University. Inthe American Humanist Association named him the Humanist of the Year for his lifetime of work, stephen jay gould essays. Untilthis medal had been awarded every 50 years by the Linnean Society of London, stephen jay gould essays.
Early in his career, Gould and his colleague Niles Eldredge developed the theory of punctuated equilibriumwhich describes the rate of speciation in the fossil record as occurring relatively rapidly, which then alternates to a longer period of evolutionary stability. According to Gould, punctuated equilibrium revised a key pillar "in the central logic of Darwinian theory, stephen jay gould essays. Comparisons stephen jay gould essays made to George Gaylord Simpson 's work in Tempo and Mode in Evolutionin which he also illustrated relatively sudden changes along evolutionary lines.
Simpson describes the paleontological record as being characterized by predominantly gradual change which he termed horotelyalthough he also documented examples of slow bradytelystephen jay gould essays, and rapid tachytely rates of evolution.
Punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism are not mutually exclusive a Simpson's work demonstratesand examples of each have been documented in different lineages. The debate between these two models is often misunderstood by non-scientists, and according to Richard Dawkins has been oversold by the media, stephen jay gould essays. Gould made significant contributions to evolutionary developmental biologystephen jay gould essays, [48] especially in his work Ontogeny and Phylogeny.
Neoteny is the process where ontogeny is slowed down and the organism does not reach the end of its development. Terminal addition is the process by which an organism adds to its development by speeding and shortening earlier stages in the developmental process. Gould's influence in the field of evolutionary developmental biology continues to be seen today in areas such as the evolution of feathers.
Gould was a champion of biological constraintsinternal limitations upon developmental pathways, as well as other non-selectionist forces in evolution. Rather than direct adaptationshe considered many higher functions of the human brain to be the unintended side consequence of natural selection.
InGould's Harvard colleague E. Wilson introduced his analysis of animal behavior including human behavior based on a sociobiological framework that suggested that many social behaviors have a strong evolutionary basis. This open letter criticized Wilson's notion of a "deterministic view of human society and human action. But Gould did not rule out sociobiological explanations for many aspects of animal behavior, and later wrote: "Sociobiologists have broadened their range of selective stories by invoking concepts of inclusive fitness and kin selection to solve successfully I think the vexatious problem of altruism —previously the greatest stumbling block to a Darwinian theory of social behavior Here sociobiology has had and will continue to have success.
And here I wish it well. For it represents an extension of basic Darwinism to a realm where it should apply. With Richard Lewontin, stephen jay gould essays, Gould wrote an influential paper entitled, stephen jay gould essays, " The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm ", [50] which introduced the architectural term " spandrel " into evolutionary biology.
In architecture, a spandrel is a triangular space which exists over the haunches of an arch. When visiting Venice inGould noted that the spandrels of the San Marco cathedral, while quite beautiful, were not spaces planned by the architect. Rather the spaces arise as "necessary architectural byproducts of mounting a dome on rounded arches.
Proposed examples include the "masculinized genitalia in female hyenasexaptive use of an umbilicus as a brooding chamber by snails, the shoulder hump of the giant Irish deer stephen jay gould essays, and several key features of human mentality. In Voltaire 's CandideDr. Pangloss is portrayed as a clueless scholar who, despite the evidence, insists that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds".
Gould and Lewontin asserted that it is Panglossian for evolutionary biologists to view all traits as atomized things that had been naturally selected for, and criticised biologists for not granting theoretical space to other causes, such as phyletic and developmental constraints.
The relative frequency of spandrels, so defined, versus adaptive features in nature, remains a controversial topic in evolutionary biology.
Gould was criticized by philosopher Daniel Dennett for using the term spandrel instead of pendentive, [63] a spandrel that curves across a right angle to support a dome.
Robert Mark, a professor of civil engineering at Princeton, offered his expertise in the pages of American Scientistnoting that these definitions are often misunderstood in architectural theory. Mark concluded, "Gould and Lewontin's misapplication of the term spandrel for pendentive perhaps implies a wider latitude of design choice than they intended for their analogy.
But Dennett's critique of the architectural stephen jay gould essays of the analogy goes even further astray because he slights the technical rationale of the architectural elements in question. Gould favored the argument that evolution has no inherent drive towards long-term " progress ". Uncritical commentaries often stephen jay gould essays evolution as a ladder of progressleading towards bigger, faster, and smarter organisms, the assumption being that evolution is somehow driving organisms to get more complex and ultimately more like humankind.
Gould argued that stephen jay gould essays drive was not towards complexitybut towards diversification. Because life is constrained to begin with a simple starting point like bacteriaany diversity resulting from this start, by random walk, will have a skewed distribution and therefore be perceived to move in the direction of higher complexity.
But life, Gould argued, can also easily adapt towards simplification, as is often the case with parasites. In a review of Full HouseRichard Dawkins approved of Gould's general argument, but suggested that he saw evidence of a "tendency for lineages stephen jay gould essays improve cumulatively their adaptive fit to their particular way of life, by increasing the numbers of features which combine together in adaptive complexes.
By this definition, adaptive evolution is not just incidentally progressive, it is deeply, dyed-in-the-wool, indispensably progressive. Gould's arguments towards progress in evolutionary biology did not extend towards a notion of progress in general or notions of cultural evolution. In Full HouseGould compares two notions of progress against one another.
While the first concept of progress, evolutionary progress, is argued to be invalid for stephen jay gould essays number of biological considerations, Gould permits that evolution may operate in human cultural evolution through a Lamarckian mechanism.
Gould goes on to argue that the disappearance of the 0. In his view such a process is likely reflective in a number of cultural phenomena including sports, the visual arts, and music where, unlike in biological systems, the realm of aesthetic possibilities is constrained by a "right wall" of human limits and aesthetic preferences.
Gould never embraced cladistics as a method of investigating evolutionary lineages and process, possibly because he was concerned that such investigations would lead to neglect of the details in historical biology, which he considered all-important.
In the early s this led him into a debate with Derek Briggswho had begun to apply quantitative cladistic techniques to the Burgess Shale fossils, about the methods to be used in interpreting these fossils. Inexpensive but increasingly powerful personal computers made it possible to process large quantities of data about organisms and their characteristics.
Around the same time the development of effective polymerase chain reaction techniques made it possible to apply cladistic methods of analysis to biochemical and genetic features as well. Most of Gould's empirical research pertained to land snails. He focused his early work on the Bermudian genus Poecilozoniteswhile his later work concentrated on the West Indian genus Cerion.
According to Gould " Cerion is the land snail of maximal diversity in form throughout the entire world. There are described species of this single genus. In fact, they're not really species, they all interbreed, but the names exist to express a real phenomenon which is this incredible morphological diversity.
Some are shaped like stephen jay gould essays balls, some are shaped like pencils. Now my main subject is the evolution of form, and the problem of how it is that you can get this diversity amid so little genetic difference, so far as we can tell, is a very interesting one.
First Person: Stephen Jay Gould – On Evolution (1994) [144p]
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Sep 11, · Stephen Jay Gould Essays. Stephen Jay Gould Research Paper Words | 3 Pages. Stephen Jay Gould was a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist he was also an accomplished writer and civil rights activist. Gould was born in Bayside New York in He was raised in a Jewish family although he never practiced the jewish faith by Stephen Jay Gould My life has recently intersected, in a most personal way, two of Mark Twain's famous quips. One I shall defer to the end of this essay. The other (sometimes attributed to Disraeli), identifies three species of mendacity, each worse than the one before - lies, lies, and statistics Stephen Jay Gould American nonfiction writer and essayist. The following entry presents an overview of Gould's career through Gould, an educator and evolutionary biologist, is
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