Gould vs Darwin question
eric strayer (estrayer@capella.unm.edu)
26 Sep 1995 05:21:32 GMT
I'm a socy grad student. In one of my core
courses there is an (ex?) anthro major who
got all over my case when I commented on S.J. Gould's
discussion of Darwin's possible reasons for
postponing his publishing of "Origin" until
Russell was about to release a similar finding/study.
(BTW, the reason Gould speculates is that of
social pressures, loss of status etc. I thought
a good argument and not particularly hostile either.
Just a very probable condition of the time.)
What this student said was something like "Well,
everyone knows that Gould has it in for Darwin . . ."
And s/he wouldn't back down or open up on the topic.
I subsequently looked into Gould's book "Ever Since
Darwin" (the usual collection of easy reading but
eloquent essays from N. History) in which he seems to
have nothing bad at all to say of Darwin.
Does something come up later in Gould's career to
sour his opinion? I mean, the book I cited is kind
of old -- 1976 I think.
Thanks for any comments.
best,
Eric
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Eric Strayer |"All that is solid melts into air" |
estrayer@unm.edu | *** Marx |
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