On September 10, 1941, Stephen Jay Gould was born. Gould was a paleontologist, biologist, and historian of science. He had the talent of writing about complicated scientific questions in a way that the non-scientist could understand.
Gould grew up in New York and said that he decided to be a paleontologist at the age of five when his father took him to the American Museum of Natural History and he saw a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. That interest lasted in adulthood, and he graduated from Antioch College in 1963 with majors in geology and philosophy. He completed his graduate studies at Columbia in 1967 and was immediately hired by Harvard, where he remained on the faculty until his death.
He made his major contribution to the field of evolutionary biology in 1972 when he and his colleague Niles Eldredge presented the theory of punctuated equilibrium. The history of evolution, they argued, was not a history of slow, steady change; rather, long periods of evolutionary stability were periodically interrupted by short periods of dramatic change, during which several new species were likely to evolve.
Beginning in 1974, Gould wrote a monthly essay for Natural History magazine. These “This View of Life” essays focused largely on evolution but covered a wide range of other scientific topics as well. The series continued until 2001, and Gould’s essays were collected in a series of ten books, beginning with Ever Since Darwin and The Panda’s Thumb.
One of Gould’s most popular books outside those collections was 1981’s The Mismeasure of Man, in which he looked at the history of psychological testing—particularly the measurement of intelligence—and the ways in which it had been misused to support racist and sexist ideas. There was some controversy surrounding the book, with Gould’s critics arguing that his own politics had led him to read racist intent into the work of earlier researchers where no such intent existed.
In 1982, Gould was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of cancer often caused by exposure to asbestos. He had been told that this cancer was “incurable, with a median mortality of only eight months,” but survived. Ever the explainer, Gould responded by writing an essay for Discover magazine explaining what his diagnosis and survival could teach us about statistical averages and how we misinterpret them.
Gould returned to the field of evolution in 1989’s Wonderful Life. He looked at the unusual animals of the Cambrian period, roughly 500 million years ago, to argue that evolution isn’t entirely about Darwinian “survival of the fittest;” sometimes, Gould suggested, traits evolve and survive simply by chance.
That wasn’t the only area in which Gould disagreed with current ideas in evolutionary theory. He was opposed to many of the ideas that made up the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which argue, to vastly oversimplify, that not only physical traits but behavioral and social traits, can be explained by evolution and natural selection. Gould believed that behaviors were far more likely to be rooted in cultural and social conditioning.
In his 1996 book Full House, Gould returned to the ways in which we misunderstand statistics, this time focusing on how that misunderstanding leads to confusion about complex systems and processes, such as evolution.
Gould was raised in a secular Jewish household, and usually described himself as an agnostic. As a scientist specializing in the study of evolution, it was difficult to stay out of the battles surrounding evolution and creationism. In the late 1990s, he proposed a truce of sorts, with his idea of “non-overlapping magisteria.” Religion and science are different realms, he proposed, each uniquely qualified to answer certain types of questions. Science can best answer questions about what the universe is made of and how it works; religion can best answer questions about morality and ethics. The two realms don’t overlap, and those on each side of the disagreement should agree to leave to each area the questions that it is capable of answering. Gould’s most thorough presentation of this idea is in his 1999 book Rocks of Ages.
Gould had a variety of interests outside science—architecture, Gilbert & Sullivan musicals, rare books—and his readers came to expect that he would use those interests to illustrate his scientific points in his essays. He wrote so frequently about one of those interests—baseball—that an entire volume of his baseball essays was eventually published as Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville.
In February 2002, Gould was diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer, unrelated to his 1982 mesothelioma. The cancer spread very rapidly, and Gould died on May 20, 2002.
Also This Week
September 7, 1900
Taylor Caldwell was born. For more than 40 years, Caldwell was a best-selling novelist. She wrote multigenerational sagas, often centered on a family’s rise from poverty to power; her first novel, Dynasty of Death, and her last major success, Captains and the Kings, are such stories. Caldwell also wrote historical novels, frequently centered on religious figures such as Saint Paul (Great Lion of God) or Judas Iscariot (I, Judas).
September 7, 1940
Dario Argento was born. Argento is an Italian director who was a major figure in the development of the giallo genre in the 1970s and 1980s. These erotically-tinged horror thrillers were a key influence on American slasher films. Several of Argento’s films are available for streaming at Kanopy, including Phenomena, Inferno, and Suspiria.
September 10, 1945
Jose Feliciano was born. Feliciano is a singer-guitarist whose music is a mellow blend of Latin, jazz, blues, and rock. He had his greatest success in the late 1960s with his cover of The Doors’ “Light My Fire;” his “Feliz Navidad” has become a Christmas standard. Feliciano continues to record, more often in Spanish these days, and still occasionally scores a hit on the Latin music charts. More of his music is available at hoopla and Freegal.
September 10, 1960
Alison Bechdel was born. Bechdel is a cartoonist whose first success came with the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which ran for 25 years and told the story of a group of lesbian friends. She has also written two popular graphic memoirs, each focused on her relationship with one of her parents—Fun Home, which was adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical, and Are You My Mother?