[Evolidaho] [Fwd: Stephen Jay Gould Coming To Idaho!]

[Rosemary J. Smith]

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Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 21:03:56 EDT
Subject: Stephen Jay Gould Coming To Idaho!
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TO: Evolution Community
FROM: Gary L. Bennett

The Boise State University Distinguished Lecture Series will be bringing Dr. 
Stephen Jay Gould to BSU on 9 October 2002 for an evening lecture.  The BSU 
notice states, "A bestselling author and celebrated scientist, Gould has 
helped shape crucial debates on the theory of evolution, the interpretation 
of fossil evidence and the meaning of diversity and change in biology".

Below is a recent news item about Dr. Gould from The Independent (UK).





Subject: SJ Gould lambasts creationists



Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who 'hijacked' his theory

for their own ends

By Steve Connor

The Independent [UK]


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=283041


"Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great evolutionary biologists of our time,

will publish his "magnum opus", this month, in which he lambasts

creationists for deliberately distorting his theories to undermine the

teaching of Darwinism in schools."


Independent.co.uk


Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who 'hijacked' his theory

for their own ends

By Steve Connor, Science Editor


09 April 2002


Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great evolutionary biologists of our time,

will publish his "magnum opus", this month, in which he lambasts

creationists for deliberately distorting his theories to undermine the

teaching of Darwinism in schools.


Professor Gould accuses creationists of having exploited the sometimes

bitter dispute between him and his fellow Darwinists to promulgate the myth

that the theory of evolution is riven with doubts and is, therefore, just as

valid as biblical explanations for life on Earth.


The distinguished professor of zoology at Harvard University, whose

1,400-page book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, has been 10 years in

the writing, was intimately involved with the fight against creationist

teaching during the 1970s and 1980s in the American Deep South.


The arguments have resurfaced in Britain after the news that a school in

Gateshead has been teaching creationism alongside evolution, arguing both

are equal valid viewpoints.


Creationists still use Professor Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium"

< which argues for the sudden appearance of new species < to support their

view that Darwinism is being challenged by some of the leading thinkers in

biology.


Although Professor Gould never disputed the central tenet of Darwinism,

natural selection, his explanation for how new species might rapidly arise

is often presented by creationists as a direct challenge to the scientific

orthodoxy at the heart of Darwinism.


Evangelical creationists in particular have argued the universally accepted

gaps in the fossil record and the frequent absence of intermediate forms

between fossilised species are evidence that evolution cannot fully account

for the diversity of life on Earth.


They have used Professor Gould's theory < which proposes long periods of

stable "equilibrium" punctuated by sudden changes that are not captured as

fossils < as pr!

oof that Darwinist "gradualism" was wrong and it should

therefore be taught, at the very minimum, alongside creationism in schools.


Stephen Layfield, a science teacher at Emmanuel College in Gateshead, which

is at the centre of the row, used the lack of intermediate fossils between

ancestral species and their descendants to question Darwinist evolution.


Professor Gould says creationists have unwittingly misinterpreted or

deliberately misquoted his work in a manner that would otherwise be

laughable, were it not for the impact it can have on the teaching of science

in schools.


"Such inane and basically harmless perorations may boil the blood but

creationist attempts to use punctuated equilibrium in their campaigns for

suppressing the teaching of evolution raise genuine worries," Professor

Gould said.


Fundamentalist teaching reached its height in the United States in the early

1920s and culminated in the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in Tennessee in

1925 when John Scopes, a biology teacher, was arrested for teaching

evolution in contravention of state law.


A second creationist surge occurred in the US during the 1970s, which led to

the "equal time" laws for the teaching of creationism and evolution in the

state schools of Arkansas and Louisiana. The rule was overturned in two

court cases in 1982 and 1987.


At the same time, Professor Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium was

being debated among scientists. With the fellow Darwinist, Niles Eldredge,

who cited the unchanging nature of Trilobite fossils in support of the idea,

Professor Gould presented the theory at a scientific conference in 1971. A

seminal scientific paper followed a year later.


"But I had no premonition about the hubbub that punctuated equilibrium would

generate," Professor Gould said. Some "absurdly-hyped popular accounts"

proclaimed the death of Darwinism, with punctuated equilibrium as the

primary assassin, he says.


"Our theory became the public symbol and stalking horse for all debate

within evolutionary theory. Moreover, since!

 popular impression now falsely

linked the supposed 'trouble' within evolutionary theory to the rise of

creationism, some intemperate colleagues began to blame Eldredge and me for

the growing strength of creationism.


"Thus, we stood falsely accused by some colleagues both for dishonestly

exaggerating our theory to proclaim the death of Darwin (presumably for our

own cynical quest for fame), and for unwittingly fostering the scourge of

creationism as well," he said.


Not every scientist, however, would agree that Professor Gould was innocent

in the dispute, which was exploited by evangelical creationists.


What was essentially an arcane argument between consenting academics soon

became a public schism between Gould and his Darwinist rivals, whose

position was best articulated by the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins.


At its most simplistic, the idea of punctuated equilibrium was presented as

an alternative to the "gradualism" of traditional Darwinism. Rather than

species evolving gradually, mutation by mutation, over a long period of

time, Professor Gould argued they arose within a period of tens of thousands

rather than tens of millions of years < a blink of the eye in geological

terms.


Professor Dawkins savaged the Gould-Eldredge idea, arguing gaps in the

fossil record could be explained by evolutionary change occurring in a

different place from where most fossils were found. In any case, Dawkins

said, we would need an extraordinarily rich fossil record to track

evolutionary change.


Gould and Eldredge could have made that point themselves, he said. "But no,

instead they chose, especially in their later writings, in which they were

eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically

opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian synthesis," Dawkins

writes in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker.


"They did this by emphasising the 'gradualism' of the Darwinian view of

evolution as opposed to the sudden 'jerky', sporadic 'punctuationism' of

their own ... The fact is that, in the !

fullest and most serious sense,

Eldredge and Gould are really just as gradualist as Darwin or any of his

followers," Professor Dawkins wrote.


The subtleties of the dispute were, however, lost on commentators outside

the rarefied field of evolutionary theory.


It was certainly lost on many creationists who just revelled in the

vitriolic spat between the leading Darwinists. (The dispute was so vitriolic

it became personal < in his book, Gould relegates his critics to a section

titled "The Wages of Jealousy".)


Richard Fortey, the Collier Professor of the Public Understanding of Science

at Bristol University, says Professors Gould and Dawkins are closer than

many people realise.


With some of Britain's leading scientists and theologians writing to the

Prime Minister to voice their concerns about the teaching of creationism,

the issue has come to the fore.


"It's absurd we are now facing this creationist threat," Professor Fortey

said. "It's a debate that belongs to the 1840s. Evolution is not just a

theory, it's as much of a fact as the existence of the solar system."


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