Stephen Jay Gould Interview (page: 6 / 8) Evolutionary Biologist and Paleontologist	Print Interview

When you make a new discovery, when you hit on a new idea, what's that like for you?

Stephen Jay Gould: It varies. I'm not a very romantic person in my philosophy of life at all. There are some people who, when they make discoveries, think about Archimedes jumping out of the bath and running through the streets of Syracuse shouting, "Eureka!" I'm more likely just to give a little smile and say, "Oh, that's how it works. How nice." That's just my temperament. It's always satisfying to bring things together, but there isn't always a moment when you do it. Sometimes it's only in retrospect that you realize that it's come together, and there it sits.

Is there a particular talent that you don't have that you wish you had?

Stephen Jay Gould: Oh sure, mathematical skills. I'm not innumerate by any means, and I think I'm pretty good at one aspect of work that turns out to have numbers involved. That is scanning large columns of numbers and seeing patterns, but mathematicians would say that isn't mathematics.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I do not have good analytical skills. My main skill in life is tangential thinking, it's seen in a relationship among objects that most other people would see as disparate and unrelated, totally. I can, almost always, particularly when I write an essay, sit down and draw 20 or 25 things together, that might range from choral music to baseball to science, that's not hokey. It really works. But I'm not good at analytical thinking and working my way through deductive sequences. I never can figure out Agatha Christie mysteries, 'cause she writes in that mode. Nor Sherlock Holmes, cause Sherlock Holmes is the prototype of deductivist thinking. On the other hand, whenever I read a Peter Wimsey mystery, I almost always see how it goes, because Dorothy Sayers actually had an intellectual theory which is very much the way I think. I think she wrote the Wimsey novels to counteract the notion that thought is an analytical sequence of deduction. Wimsey thinks the way I do, in that he sits down, he jumbles together 20 or 30 pieces. And then they fall out, and when they come together to make a pattern, and in a sense you know it's right, because it's the only way those 27 disparate items could go together. If I had, in addition to these tangential skills, I have mathematical and analytical abilities as well, I'd really have something going for me. But maybe the brain doesn't have room for both, I don't know.

At this point in your career, is there any idea, or any problem, or any task that most interests you?

Stephen Jay Gould: Well sure. I have to finish a book on the structure of evolutionary theory which is about half done. Then I've got to write a third book in this major trilogy of mine. The first having been on ontogeny and phylogeny, the study of the relationship and growth in evolution. And then? I have enough projects to keep me going well into the millennium, and well past any conceivable span of years that I'm going to be allotted on this earth.

Are there any specific areas of knowledge you would like to explore, or mysteries that you would like to solve, before you finish your work?

Stephen Jay Gould: The most general thing I would say is that I'd love to know how evolution works in more detail. I don't think there's a key, so there's not a light bulb turning on that's going to resolve. Evolution is a very fascinating, complex pastiche of historical and analytical principles. I don't think there's a way that anyone's going to put it together. But I think anyone who struggles with it can make contributions to parts of it, and that's what I'm trying to do. The main thing I'm committed to doing is trying to show how studies at large time scales, on which paleontologists work, will have a direct contribution to make to evolutionary theory, and a distinctive contribution. There used to be a conventionalism within Darwinian theory which denied that, and said that all theory can emerge from the momentary study of what's happening within populations. The fossil record is merely an archive, it's merely an inventory of what happened, but that all theory can come from geneticists' study in flies in bottles. That's a little oversimplified, but it's not really wrong. The focus of my career has been to show that this direct study of events that occur over millions of years in time needs a theoretical component of its own that is not directly deducible from generational genetic models of modern populations.

There have been times when you have put forward ideas and theories that have caused some controversy and criticism. How do you handle criticism?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Stephen Jay Gould: It depends on its nature. This theory of punctuated equilibrium that Niles Eldredge and I developed in 1972 was very controversial, and has been one of the foci of evolutionary debates for 20 years now. So I'm certainly no stranger to that kind of controversy. And then I've been involved in social controversies like the "race and IQ" issue and the creationism issue. The punctuated equilibrium debate was an intellectual exercise that had to be dealt with in a more conventionalized way, by writing papers, by giving speeches, by collecting data from one's point of view, or against it, as it happened. The creationism debate was something totally different, because it has nothing to do with intellect. Creationism is a totally unviable bit of nonsense. It's a socially important issue in America, but you don't fight that with the same tools. It's a political struggle, that's fought before the courts, and we won it. So it very much depends on the nature of the issue.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Do you enjoy these kinds of debates?

Stephen Jay Gould: It depends on a lot of things.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. If they are honorable discussions of ideas that are engaged in by flexible people, and that is subject to tests, then debate can really move a field forward. If they're personally bitter and acrimonious, then who needs them? Life's full of difficulties anyway, why create more of them? Life's full of hardships. People are going to get sick and die and the world's full of tragedy, why make more for yourself by petty bickering in a professional world where ideally you don't need to have it? So it very much depends on the nature of it. Even the creationism debate, it was fascinating to be part of, because it's part of American social history. I sat in a courtroom in Arkansas, and it was like being at the Scopes trial in the 1920s. It was being a part of a major incident in the 20th century of American history. That part was thrilling.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Other parts of it are nonsense, because there's really no intellectual issue involved in it. So it very much depends.

How do you deal with an issue that is not intellectual, that is emotional? In this case it was a religious issue. How do you deal with a question like that, when it's a matter of faith, or a matter of belief?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Stephen Jay Gould: As I've said, it's a political struggle, and that's all it is, because first of all it's about religion. But I don't even really see it as a religious issue, because the vast majority of people who are religious are on our side of this. Creationism is a movement by a very small -- though not insignificant, they're still millions of people -- a minority of Biblical literalists to impose their religion, to which they are entirely welcome of course. I'm a real First Amendment absolutist on that issue. What people do in their homes and churches, I have no interest in refuting. I may think they're wrong, and over a cup of coffee or a beer I'll be happy to argue with them, but I'm not entering their churches or their homes to tell them. But I don't want them in the science classrooms of my public school either, touting their minority version of religion that happens in this case to be factually incorrect.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Who's your best critic within your own field?

Stephen Jay Gould: On issues of evolutionary theory, John Maynard Smith in England, because he's the smartest conventional Darwinian in the world. John Maynard Smith is a very good example. He is representative of a strictly Darwinian way of thinking. I'm basically Darwinian in my own views, but he really believes that natural selection, working on local populations for adaptive advantage, pretty much powers all of evolution. He's also a real old-fashioned, dedicated intellectual. He never makes arguments personal. He's not a petty sniper. If he disagrees intellectually, he doesn't think you're a bad person because of that. He's a pleasure to argue with and he's very smart.

Are you affected by criticism of your work?

Stephen Jay Gould: Some of it. I don't think there's any general answer, because in some ways, all of science is criticism. There's almost nothing else, so it's almost like asking me how, how do I do my work? As to very specific criticisms, the ones that are petty and personal, I try simply to ignore. That's always the best strategy. The ones that are intellectual and important, I try and answer in the same way.

Stephen Jay Gould Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8