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Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution Hardcover – May 26, 2009

by David F. Prindle (Author)

4.4 3 ratings

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Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was, until his death in 2002, America's best-known natural scientist. His monthly essays in Natural History magazine were widely read by both scientists and ordinary citizens with an interest in science. One of his books won the National Book Award, and another was a bestseller in three countries. Philosopher Daniel Dennett proclaimed him "America's evolutionist laureate."

While many people have written about Gould's science, pro and con, and a few have written about his politics, this is the first book to explore his science and politics as a consistent whole. Political scientist David F. Prindle argues that Gould's mind worked along two tracks simultaneously—the scientific and the political. All of his concepts and arguments were bona fide contributions to science, but all of them also contained specifically political implications.

As one example among many, Prindle cites Gould’s controversial argument that if the "tape of evolution" could be rewound and then allowed to unspool again, nothing resembling human beings would likely evolve. This was part of his larger thesis that people are not the result of a natural tendency toward perfection in evolution, but the result of chance, or as Gould put it, "contingency." As Prindle notes, Gould’s scientific ideas often sought to attack human hubris, and thus prepare the ground for the political argument that people should treat nature with more restraint.

Prindle evaluates Gould’s concepts of punctuated equilibrium (developed with Niles Eldredge), "spandrels," and "exaptation"; his stance on sociobiology, on human inequality and intelligence testing; his pivotal role in the culture wars between science and fundamentalist Christianity; and claims that he was a closet Marxist, which Prindle disputes. He continually emphasizes that in all these debates Gould’s science cannot be understood without an understanding of his politics. He concludes by considering whether Gould offered a new theory of evolution.

Anyone with an interest in one of America’s great scientists, or in paleontology, evolutionary theory, or intellectual history will find Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution to be a fascinating exploration of the man and his ideas.

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About the Author

David F. Prindle (Austin, TX) is the author of The Paradox of Democratic Capitalism: Politics and Economics in American Thought, among other books and articles. He is professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prometheus Books (May 26, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 249 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1591027187
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1591027188
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.78 x 9.27 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,629,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,885 in Scientist Biographies
- #11,232 in Evolution (Books)

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David F. Prindle

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David Prindle is a political scientist and professor at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or co-author of 21 books and has won six awards for teaching and writing.

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Dick Marti

A very good overview

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2009

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A book of 217 text pages is not enough to do complete justice to the work of Harvard University evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who died in 2002. This book, by political scientist David Prindle is an excellent start. Prindle limits his investigation to the political connections of Gould's evolutionary work and views, and thus keeps things manageable. As a political scientist, Prindle had a lot of catching up to do to make himself familiar, not just with Gould's work, but with evolutionary biology on a quite detailed level. Without that background, he could not have written this book. This is not an elementary text. Prindle doesn't cover everything, but what he covers is done well. He shows that Gould was not always consistent in his views and he does not hesitate to come down on Gould's side, or on the other, when there seems to be a clear choice to be made on one issue or the other. Chapters are extensively footnoted and the book is very well written, with no typos that I recall.

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Paul Vjecsner

Biases beyond political correctness

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2010

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Why I am giving three stars to this book I may myself not know. Perhaps because it is so outlandishly biased, both scientifically and politically, that it amounts more to hilarious entertainment than to the subject of criticism meriting low evaluation.

One may begin with politics, which the author is in the book's title concerned with as regards Stephen Jay Gould. But aside from Gould's "politics of evolution", the book's author has his own sympathetic stance as (p.118) a "leftist" opposed to "existing political inequalities", held fostered by the "right-wing", whose "journalists...justify patriarchy, or sexism, or racism, or capitalism...". I have watched Fox News and listened to Rush Limbaugh, these considered paragons of the right-wing, and I have never heard them fostering political inequalities and the other particulars except for defending capitalism. The hate of capitalism, the system found today greatly beneficial for public prosperity, went out with the demise of Marxism, with not even Ralph Nader attacking it, reserving his displeasure for "corporations" instead. The preceding thus illustrates the author's severe bias, which seems to lack a hint of objectivity.

He correspondingly also uses as cusswords the terms "conservative" and "creationist", the latter appearing as the designation he applies to everyone opposed to Darwinism. They include proponents of "intelligent design", whom he characterizes alongside others as (p.37) "apostles of irrationality...in their efforts to insert the teaching of superstition into American public schools", as (p.46) "imposters" promoting "pseudosciences", as (p.184) "Barbarians at the Gates", as (p.200) "individuals who exist external to the realm of science, and who share neither values nor points of view with scientists", or as (p.201) "religious zealots [that] are a fundamentally different sort of character from scientists", adding, "Science enshrines rationality as an ideal; creationism enshrines irrationality."

In answer, one may first correct an impression that the concept of "intelligent design" originated with the "creationists" of the 20th century. Instead it can be traced back at least two centuries to William Paley, who strongly impressed Darwin. Further, "intelligent design" has been advocated by committed scientists like Michael Denton, Michael J. Behe, or Stephen C. Meyer. Our author credits the first of these with (p.191) "some plausibility", but explains that these creationists exploit Darwinist "weakness for their own antiscientific purposes". However, "intelligent design" makes as much effort at rational justification as does any scientific theory, Darwinism in particular. Like Darwinism, it proposes an at least as plausible means by which the functionality of organisms was acquired, namely by design, in similarity to the functionality of objects of human design.

But one can go much farther regarding rationality and science. Our author continues, mentioning Darwinist "undirected...random mutations", and criticizing the idea of "directed variability" which "Darwinists repudiate". Contrary, however, to Darwinism's exclusively "undirected" events in organisms, live organisms do indeed undergo "directed" events and do so wholesale. In distinction from lifeless ones, live organisms are in all their functions "directed" toward self-preservation. This principal aim or purpose is responsible for all of the organism's responses, adaptations, to its environment, and it makes Darwinism's fundamental argument of absence of purpose in biology false.

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Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution Hardcover – May 26, 2009

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