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boundary 2 30.3 (2003) 213-239



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Struggle in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Stanley Shostak

Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). This work is cited parenthetically.

I might begin this review, as others have begun theirs, 1 by eulogizing Stephen Jay Gould as an influential paleontologist and evolutionary scientist, a distinguished historian/philosopher/sociologist of science, and an immensely successful public educator and popularizer of evolutionary thought, 2 but I prefer not to. My objective is to review The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, not to praise Gould, and his book is not likely to be influential, a contribution to the history/philosophy/sociology of science, or popular, although it may be more than the "torrent of words" Gould concedes, however disingenuously (973).

Responsibility for the book's major flaws rests with Gould. 3 He acknowledged [End Page 213] how "highly controversial" 4 his notions of species selection and his (and Niles Eldredge's 5) theory of punctuated equilibrium—the central topics of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory—are, but he did not cope with criticism. He complained that his "legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned only to the sounds of general theory" (1339), and he did little to conciliate his critics. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory fails utterly to dispel Gould's reputation as a "somewhat woolly thinker," 6 and even the most devoted fans of his popular books and essays in Natural History Magazine 7 will be awash in this 1343-page stream of consciousness.

But Gould did not write The Structure of Evolutionary Theory to explain himself to contemporary evolutionary scientists or to satisfy the masses. He wrote for his "successors," in the expectation that they would "improve this matrix" (48). 8 His "magnum opus . . . [and] definitive statement on evolutionary theory" 9 was meant for "later scholars [who] often need a historical primer of definitions to identify certain claims properly" (455).

The present generation of readers may legitimately feel ignored, but they may yet salvage something from The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Throughout the text, Gould dropped clues to help answer three pervasive [End Page 214] questions: (1) What is evolution? (2) What theories account for evolution? (3) What is the structure of these theories? This is not to say that he answered these questions, but, by gathering his clues, readers may gain some clarity about his thinking and advance their own quest for answers.

What Is Evolution?

Gould "devoted 20 years and the longest project of [his] life" (1339) to answer this question. As he recalled his struggle in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, he conceded that, initially, he had few arguments with Darwinists. He accepted the Darwinian definition of evolution—the history of adaptation—and his scholarly efforts were directed toward understanding how species adjusted the goodness of fit between form and function in a changing environment toward "a point of competitive superiority in local circumstances" (157).

Gould's problems with Darwinism began when he looked at the fossil record expecting to find support for adjustments in adaptations. Instead of species showing "variability—copious, small, and undirected" (343), he found species remaining apparently unchanged for long periods of species equilibrium, followed by brief episodes of step-wise, punctuated change. Neither Darwinism, which predicted the slow accumulation of infinitesimal change, nor its neo-Darwinian mathematical rationale—the calculus of gene flow known as the Modern Synthesis 10 —was easily accommodated to the fossil evidence.

Even in his own estimate, Gould became an iconoclast, and he was soon a pariah in evolutionary science. He never abandoned his faith in the fossil evidence, and he never retreated before the opposition of most evolutionary theorists and textbook authors. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory was his last testament and final effort to win converts, although it offered very little that was new. 11 [End Page 215]

Evolution occurs through punctuated equilibrium, not slow and steady (isotropic) change.

Gould was hardly the first to...

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