FC: In remembrance of Stephen Jay Gould, by Jay Ambrose

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Wed May 22 2002 - 22:42:01 PDT

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    Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 01:11:13 -0400 (EDT)
    From: "John F. McMullen" <observerat_private>
    To: johnmacsgroupat_private
    cc: Dave Farber <farberat_private>, <declanat_private>
    Subject: Ambrose: Remembering Stephen Jay Gould
    
     >From NandoTimes --
    http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/409515p-3265510c.html
    
    Remembering Stephen Jay Gould
    by Jay Ambrose
    
    Stephen Jay Gould, dead at 60, lived a life that from all appearances was
    good, honest and fruitful. It was a life aimed at expanding knowledge -
    one of the noblest aims there is - and at sharing knowledge. He did the
    latter in part through writing books that were easy for just about any of
    us to comprehend, and he accomplished this without oversimplification,
    without "dumbing down."
    
    Gould was a paleontologist whose main topic of scientific exploration and
    public discussion was evolutionary theory. He thought that evolution, in
    broad outline, was the way today's species got to be what they are, and he
    happily did battle with creationists on this score. But he did not think
    that Charles Darwin had gotten the theory exactly right, and, from their
    own collection of data, he and a fellow scholar proposed a new idea. The
    idea was referred to as "punctuated equilibrium," and what it meant was
    that significant evolutionary change is not slowly incremental but comes
    in relative eruptions.
    
    Gould was himself something like that: a burst of focused energy, an
    exclamation mark, an interruption in the usual flow of things. It was as
    if his love for a wide array of subjects - dinosaurs and land snails and
    human intelligence and on and on - was uncontainable and had to spill
    forth in prose that entertained while it explained. He was a Harvard
    professor, and according to obituaries, must have brought his explanatory
    power to the classroom; he was wildly popular with students, it is
    reported. Any of us who read him were also his students, of course, and it
    is difficult to imagine any of us being less than grateful for his
    enthusiastic attempts to enlarge our understanding.
    
    
    
    
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