Oh My Darwin! (Back to May/December)

[jf noonan]

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> 
> Gould insists that it is not possible to reduce ethics to sociobiology or
> to unify knowledge by subsuming one theory in another. Even if human traits
> like xenophobia and aggression, for example, were in the end shown to be
> the result of adaptations in the Pleistocene era, Gould contends, science
> alone will not suffice as an explanatory system. The man who largely made
> his name insisting on the purposelessness of life has found a place in his
> heart for religion. But that's not to say Gould has turned into any kind of
> crypto-creationist. No matter who turns out to be right in the end, he and
> his adaptationist foes can at least agree with Darwin that "whilst this
> planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so
> simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
> been, and are being, evolved."   *****
> 
> In the minds of evolutionary psychologists, adaptation & pervasive utility
> work together as a substitute for God.
> 
> three cheers for Richard Lewontin,

Indeed, I read this article in print last week and I am
concerned for Gould's immortal soul.  Not less so having read
the enclosed review of his latest book.

-------------------------------------

H. Allen Orr

Rocks of Ages: Science and 

Religion in the Fullness of Life

Stephen Jay Gould

Library of Contemporary Thought, $18.95

When I heard that Stephen Jay Gould had written a book on
science and religion, I got worried. Not that I usually disagree
with Gould. On the contrary, I find that I often side with him
on larger social or intellectual issues. (The same is not true
of technical matters within science, but that

The good news is that Gould avoids most of the usual
dishonesties in Rocks of Ages. The bad news is that he invents a
few of his own. His sins are, however, mostly ones of omission.

[snipped the rest -- the entire article is on the web site]

<http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR24.5/orr.html>

--

Joseph Noonan
jfn1 at msc.com