Some points. Sorry to not give references. I hope later to write up a lot of this stuff, but meanwhile I think a warning on Yudkowsky’s warning is desirable asap.
From memory, Jerry Coyne is actually a fan of Gould—don’t know where Tooby thought that he wasn’t. Ditto David Jablonski.
Gould ‘finished’ his 1400 page plus magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, only a few months before he died of cancer. Yes, it is often woefully verbose, with repetitions and overlaps that would otherwise be imho inexcusable. And his various thoughts on different levels of selection are not well structured (but imvho these are quite difficult for non-mathematicians / programmers to think about—it takes a bit of practice before you think about them clearly). But there is gold buried in his sea of words.
Gould was fighting, inter alia, against biologists’ inertia re 2nd order selection, and against Dawkin’s earlier mistake (since recanted) re the Selfish Gene. See, e.g. Darwin in the Genome by Lynn Helena Caporale for a hint of what Gould was up against. And Mayr changed his mind during his long career re speciations. I groan at some of Gould’s overstatement, but sorry Yudkowsky, at least on this topic, your overstatement is worse than Gould’s.
I haven’t read all Barkley__Rosser’s comments, but at least the first few make a lot of sense to me—nice work Barkley.
Dawkin’s earlier mistake (since recanted) re the Selfish Gene
What mistake is that? I know there’s a couple details that have been updated (e.g. the replicator / vehicle of selection distinction, from The Extended Phenotype, improved things) but overall he, like many other evolutionary biologists, still thinks it holds up really well
...Gould comes in for the greatest thrashing, especially for his flawed analysis of Samuel Morton’s cranial-skull data described in The Mismeasure of Man. Apparently motivated by his anti-racist sentiments, Gould apparently didn’t look too closely at what Morton actually did before accusing him of unconsciously manipulating data. (Gould’s book, however, is well worth reading for the other stuff.)
Trivers also goes after Gould for his (and Eldredge’s) theory of punctuated equilibrium, and here I think he’s right. If you construe that theory as being not just about patterns in the fossil record but about evolutionary process—about traits being molded by species selection—then Gould was simply wrong about that, and Trivers’s conclusions are correct. Yet, in the last chapter of my book Speciation (coauthored with Allen Orr), I think we make a persuasive case that species selection has operated in nature, and has molded the frequency array of characters that we see around us (i.e., what proportion of birds, among all birds, show sexual dimorphism for color?) Gould’s mistake, I think, was to suggest that species selection could somehow create adaptations themselves rather than just affect the array of existing adaptations.
When I think about Gould’s scientific achievements, I come up with very little concrete discoveries he made that are of any note. But he was seriously important in restoring paleobiology to a respectable discipline, for he had the rhetorical and writing skills to revive that field. And that, at least, is an accomplishment worth celebrating. Further, Gould’s Natural History essays and other popular pieces were always interesting, if sometimes tendentious, and surely helped awaken the public to the marvels of evolution.
As for Gould as a person, I had little use for him. In my experience the man was arrogant, preening, and completely lacked empathy, especially for us poor students trying to ask him questions. He often treated people very shabbily. Gould was a smart man and an eloquent man, but not a nice man. But we’re used to such people in science.
Some points. Sorry to not give references. I hope later to write up a lot of this stuff, but meanwhile I think a warning on Yudkowsky’s warning is desirable asap.
From memory, Jerry Coyne is actually a fan of Gould—don’t know where Tooby thought that he wasn’t. Ditto David Jablonski.
Gould ‘finished’ his 1400 page plus magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, only a few months before he died of cancer. Yes, it is often woefully verbose, with repetitions and overlaps that would otherwise be imho inexcusable. And his various thoughts on different levels of selection are not well structured (but imvho these are quite difficult for non-mathematicians / programmers to think about—it takes a bit of practice before you think about them clearly). But there is gold buried in his sea of words.
Gould was fighting, inter alia, against biologists’ inertia re 2nd order selection, and against Dawkin’s earlier mistake (since recanted) re the Selfish Gene. See, e.g. Darwin in the Genome by Lynn Helena Caporale for a hint of what Gould was up against. And Mayr changed his mind during his long career re speciations. I groan at some of Gould’s overstatement, but sorry Yudkowsky, at least on this topic, your overstatement is worse than Gould’s.
I haven’t read all Barkley__Rosser’s comments, but at least the first few make a lot of sense to me—nice work Barkley.
What mistake is that? I know there’s a couple details that have been updated (e.g. the replicator / vehicle of selection distinction, from The Extended Phenotype, improved things) but overall he, like many other evolutionary biologists, still thinks it holds up really well
Coyne had complicated feelings about Gould (but loved Gould’s sometimes-collaborator Lewontin, who was his supervisor). Here’s Coyne responding to Trivers’ “Vignettes of famous evolutionary biologists, large and small”: