**** Thus, I argued, [Oliver Sacks] he held a central theory about the importance of individuality and contingency in general medical theory, just as I and others stressed the centrality of historical contingency in any theoretical analysis and understanding of evolution.
Oliver saw the theory of punctuated e1quilibrium itself, which I developed with Niles Eldredge and discuss at inordinate length in Chapter 9, as my coordinating centerpiece, and I would not deny this statement. But punctuated equilbrium stands for a larger and coherent set of mostly iconoclastic concerns. . . .***** Stephen J. Gould, _The STructure of Evolutionary Theory_ (Harvard UP, 2002), p. 37.
Carrol
P.S. I _am_ a conservative. Change that is imposed merely because it would be nice as is usually destructive. And therefore only necessity can jutify change. I don't have the slightest idea whether revolution is good or possible, nor whether socialism is good, but I do know that socialist reevolution is _necessary_ for survival. Our descendants will have to work out the possiblity and goodness of socialism. (They won't have to work out what to do with capitalism because they won't be in that case.)