[editor-surveyor]

"perhaps you're also familiar with the fact that that quote is taken from his work on the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which rapid changes in an organism spark fantastic changes over a short period of evolutionary history"

I.e. a pipe dream. Gould didn't pretend that there was a shred of evidence to support punctuated equilibrium, except for the fact that, as he said, "the alternative is unthinkable." (to the evolutionite believer)

"Of course, if you're quoting one of the pre-eminent evolutionists of our time as an argument against evolution"

Gould's writing utterly demolished evolution, but he kept on grasping at straws. (he was, after all evolution's most prolific straw inventor)

[muawiyah]

Gould took on the "steady state" folks in biology and provided a better explanation for the fosil record than their own.

There used to be a problem with the "steady state" thesis in geology. Agassiz blew that away. Going further, Alfred Wegener came up with a really radical view of the way the world is structured ~ it's now the standard model.

There is no "steady state".