It was a fine obit for Gould and it reminded me of some of the twists and turns that evolutionary biology took during the eighties and early nineties. My father-in-law was an evolutionary botanist, so for quite a few years around Christmas I used to be on the look out for Gould's latest. When I found something new, I would buy it and then read as much as I could before wrapping it up. A few I went out and bought for myself. I still have Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes.
I have to admit I lost interest in a lot the later rankling that went on over the doxology of conventional Darwinism, evolution v. religion, human intelligence, sociobiology, and the rest of it.
>From the late Seventies on there was a distinct shift of focus away
from the phenomenology to the molecular level as these technologies
became available. And there developed a kind of prevailing attitude
that the only answers that counted were molecular (at least at
UCB). This shift during the eighties tended to marginalize the macro
level work.
It seems to me Gould deserved better adversaries, and a better intellectual climate. But Gould never seemed to flinch. He had that great positive willingness to fight the battles that the times delivered.
Chuck Grimes