Stephen Jay Gould,"What does the dreaded 'E' word mean anyway? A Reverie for the Opening of the New Hayden Planetarium"

Perhaps more than any other contemporary American scientist, Stephen Jay Gould committed himself to communicating the goals, processes, and achievements of science to the public. Gould's high visibility, distinctive critical voice, and marked enthusiasm for making science accessible to the general public led him to contribute to debates concerning Creationist science, evolutionary psychology, and biological determinations of race and intelligence. The essay included here, "What Does the Dreaded 'E' Word Mean Anyway?" participates in Gould's lifelong project of explaining Darwin's evolutionary theory, a project that involved clarifying what "survival of the fittest" means and trying to refute the common perception that evolutionary development necessarily involves progress toward perfection. As Gould's opening discussion of the Kansas school board's treatment of evolutionary theory shows, Darwin's ideas and their significance remain largely misunderstood to this day, more than 150 years after they were first voiced.

Undoubtedly the most prolific scientific writer of the twentieth century, Gould published more than twenty books, including The Mismeasure of Man (1982), which criticized pseudo-scientific justifications for racism and won a National Book Critics Circle Award; The Panda's Thumb (1980), which won the American Book Award; and Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1990), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Science Book Prize. Just prior to his death in 2002, Gould published his magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, which was described in a review in the Scientific American as "a monumental work, both in size (1,400-plus pages) and in scope--it sets out to do nothing less than reformulate Darwin's theory of evolution." Professor of Geology and Zoology at Harvard University and curator of the Invertebrate Paleontology collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Gould was also the recipient of many academic awards and distinctions, including a MacArthur "Genius Grant," the Glenn T. Seaborg Award for contribution to public interest in science, the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Humanists Association.

Gould has written that "humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again." While such a world view may seem bleak and uninviting, for Gould, it provided an opportunity to read, write, and think more deeply about the geological, biological, and evolutionary events that gave rise to the "fortuitous cosmic afterthought" that is humanity.

"What does the dreaded 'E' word mean anyway? A Reverie for the Opening of the New Hayden Planetarium." Natural History, 1999.
Digital image drawn from the Free Thought web site. Quotation and biographical information drawn from Stephen Jay Gould's interview by AnnOnLine, 9 October 1996.

Links to Explore:

The "G Files": offers a comprehensive, hyper-linked catalogue of Gould's contributions to public debates about evolution. To hear Gould discuss his ideas about human evolution, go to the Internet radio interview he did with Ann On Line. (Note: In order to hear Gould speak, be sure to listen to the second of the two audio files.)

The Cambrian Period: provides an introduction to the "Cambrian explosion."

Update on the Kansas City School Board: the latest news on Kansas City's ongoing effort to decide what role the subject of evolution should play in the public school curricula. Site includes links to background stories covering the rise of this effort to bring creationism into the schools.

The Electronic Universe: an educational outreach site maintained by Professor Greg Bothun, a physics professor at the University of Oregon. Includes a link to Stellar Evolution, a site that explains the main star sequence, thereby illustrating the difference between stellar evolution and biological evolution.

Stephen J. Gould (1941-2002): an obituary celebrating Gould's life work and expressing feelings of tremendous loss within the scientific community.

Questions for Learning:

• The "G Files" offers a wide array of materials related to Gould, including his Stanford Presidential Lectures. After you've read through these materials, how does Gould's discussion of Darwin in "What does the dreaded 'E' word mean anyway?" relate to Gould's discussion of "Darwinian fundamentalism"? What does it mean to describe someone as a "Darwinist" or an "Anti-Darwinist?"

• Gould's essay focuses on an event that is likely to be unfamiliar to readers who don't have an active interest in geology: "the Cambrian explosion." The Cambrian Period web site provides an introduction to this period and to the explosion that Gould discusses. Why is the explosion significant to Gould? What lesson about evolution does Gould take from this period?
  

• Gould's essay begins with a discussion of the Kansas City School Board's decision to place an emphasis on creationism in the curriculum. A year after Gould's article was been published, Kansas City rescinded the actions of the school board. After you've visited the site updating events on the Kansas City School Board, what would you say has motivated this change? Have the voters come to understand the distinctions that Gould has made in his essay? Have they rejected the notion of "creationism"? Or has something else altogether motivated this decision to return evolution to the curriculum?
  

• For the non-specialist, Gould's discussion of stellar evolution can seem rather abstract. Visit the Stellar Evolution site and work your way through Professor Bothun's explanation of how stars evolve. Does Gould's discussion of the difference between how astronomers think of evolution and how biologists think of evolution hold?
  

Questions for Connecting:

• In "What does the dreaded 'E' word mean, anyway?" Stephen Jay Gould provides an extended discussion of what the word "evolution" means in the life sciences. In "Playing God in the Garden," Michael Pollan discusses genetic engineering and the invention of the NewLeaf potato. Does genetic engineering disrupt the evolutionary process Gould describes or does it participate in that evolutionary process? Does Gould's argument suggest that we should be concerned about genetic engineering or that there is nothing to worry about? That is, does the definition of evolution used in the life sciences put to rest the concerns Pollan has raised about genetic engineering or does it heighten those concerns?

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