Posted on 04/09/2002 11:31:41 AM PDT by JediGirl
Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great evolutionary biologists of our time, will publish his "magnum opus", this month, in which he lambasts creationists for deliberately distorting his theories to undermine the teaching of Darwinism in schools.
Professor Gould accuses creationists of having exploited the sometimes bitter dispute between him and his fellow Darwinists to promulgate the myth that the theory of evolution is riven with doubts and is, therefore, just as valid as biblical explanations for life on Earth.
The distinguished professor of zoology at Harvard University, whose 1,400-page book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, has been 10 years in the writing, was intimately involved with the fight against creationist teaching during the 1970s and 1980s in the American Deep South.
The arguments have resurfaced in Britain after the news that a school in Gateshead has been teaching creationism alongside evolution, arguing both are equal valid viewpoints.
Creationists still use Professor Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" – which argues for the sudden appearance of new species – to support their view that Darwinism is being challenged by some of the leading thinkers in biology.
Although Professor Gould never disputed the central tenet of Darwinism, natural selection, his explanation for how new species might rapidly arise is often presented by creationists as a direct challenge to the scientific orthodoxy at the heart of Darwinism.
Evangelical creationists in particular have argued the universally accepted gaps in the fossil record and the frequent absence of intermediate forms between fossilised species are evidence that evolution cannot fully account for the diversity of life on Earth.
They have used Professor Gould's theory – which proposes long periods of stable "equilibrium" punctuated by sudden changes that are not captured as fossils – as proof that Darwinist "gradualism" was wrong and it should therefore be taught, at the very minimum, alongside creationism in schools.
Stephen Layfield, a science teacher at Emmanuel College in Gateshead, which is at the centre of the row, used the lack of intermediate fossils between ancestral species and their descendants to question Darwinist evolution.
Professor Gould says creationists have unwittingly misinterpreted or deliberately misquoted his work in a manner that would otherwise be laughable, were it not for the impact it can have on the teaching of science in schools.
"Such inane and basically harmless perorations may boil the blood but creationist attempts to use punctuated equilibrium in their campaigns for suppressing the teaching of evolution raise genuine worries," Professor Gould said.
Fundamentalist teaching reached its height in the United States in the early 1920s and culminated in the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in Tennessee in 1925 when John Scopes, a biology teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution in contravention of state law.
A second creationist surge occurred in the US during the 1970s, which led to the "equal time" laws for the teaching of creationism and evolution in the state schools of Arkansas and Louisiana. The rule was overturned in two court cases in 1982 and 1987.
At the same time, Professor Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium was being debated among scientists. With the fellow Darwinist, Niles Eldredge, who cited the unchanging nature of Trilobite fossils in support of the idea, Professor Gould presented the theory at a scientific conference in 1971. A seminal scientific paper followed a year later.
"But I had no premonition about the hubbub that punctuated equilibrium would generate," Professor Gould said. Some "absurdly-hyped popular accounts" proclaimed the death of Darwinism, with punctuated equilibrium as the primary assassin, he says.
"Our theory became the public symbol and stalking horse for all debate within evolutionary theory. Moreover, since popular impression now falsely linked the supposed 'trouble' within evolutionary theory to the rise of creationism, some intemperate colleagues began to blame Eldredge and me for the growing strength of creationism.
"Thus, we stood falsely accused by some colleagues both for dishonestly exaggerating our theory to proclaim the death of Darwin (presumably for our own cynical quest for fame), and for unwittingly fostering the scourge of creationism as well," he said.
Not every scientist, however, would agree that Professor Gould was innocent in the dispute, which was exploited by evangelical creationists.
What was essentially an arcane argument between consenting academics soon became a public schism between Gould and his Darwinist rivals, whose position was best articulated by the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins.
At its most simplistic, the idea of punctuated equilibrium was presented as an alternative to the "gradualism" of traditional Darwinism. Rather than species evolving gradually, mutation by mutation, over a long period of time, Professor Gould argued they arose within a period of tens of thousands rather than tens of millions of years – a blink of the eye in geological terms.
Professor Dawkins savaged the Gould-Eldredge idea, arguing gaps in the fossil record could be explained by evolutionary change occurring in a different place from where most fossils were found. In any case, Dawkins said, we would need an extraordinarily rich fossil record to track evolutionary change.
Gould and Eldredge could have made that point themselves, he said. "But no, instead they chose, especially in their later writings, in which they were eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian synthesis," Dawkins writes in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker.
"They did this by emphasising the 'gradualism' of the Darwinian view of evolution as opposed to the sudden 'jerky', sporadic 'punctuationism' of their own ... The fact is that, in the fullest and most serious sense, Eldredge and Gould are really just as gradualist as Darwin or any of his followers," Professor Dawkins wrote.
The subtleties of the dispute were, however, lost on commentators outside the rarefied field of evolutionary theory.
It was certainly lost on many creationists who just revelled in the vitriolic spat between the leading Darwinists. (The dispute was so vitriolic it became personal – in his book, Gould relegates his critics to a section titled "The Wages of Jealousy".)
Richard Fortey, the Collier Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Bristol University, says Professors Gould and Dawkins are closer than many people realise.
With some of Britain's leading scientists and theologians writing to the Prime Minister to voice their concerns about the teaching of creationism, the issue has come to the fore.
"It's absurd we are now facing this creationist threat," Professor Fortey said. "It's a debate that belongs to the 1840s. Evolution is not just a theory, it's as much of a fact as the existence of the solar system."
When a child is born it is a miracle. In my view it doesn’t make it any less a miracle because we know something about the mechanics that allowed the child to be born. Is God eliminated because we know about DNA?
Is God less of a God because He used a gradual process of evolution rather than waving a magic wand and suddenly bringing man from nothingness?
Love your SN too.
You are right in so many ways. What kills me is the creationists who refuse to allow for God to use whatever means possible to get to the point we are at today. They say evolution is blasphemy, when I say it is very arrogant to suppose how God works. Tell me, where did Cain's wife come from? He was expelled for killing his brother in one verse then the very next he has a wife. Where did she come from? Tell me of her people.
The people I don;t understand are the old earth creationists. They don't believe in the evolution of man, but do they believe in the evolution of other animals? I don;t think so. This point of view is the most disturbing. Do they think God just floats around with a wrist watch on and says, "OK T-Rex, it's your time to go" and then waves his magic wand and they all drop dead? Now it's time for the giant sloth to come into existence, waving the wand again. Poof, there are thousands of sloths spread out across an area.
I say that God can use any means possible, and it is pure arrogance to assume exactly what God is thinking.
P.S. If you are a Craetionist, I will not read your answer until you tell me where Cain's wife and her people come from.
Jer 2:27 Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth:
Evolution summed up in 2 little verses.
You cannot scientifically explain a created object. You can, however, disprove much of the darwin theory. Science looks only for one type of answer. If the Bible is right and God created Adam, how old was Adam when God created him? Was he a grown man or an infant? It's the old "Which came first the chicken or the egg" argument. If you only allow for the possibility that it was the egg then you might as well not ask the question "Where and how did life begin." It is a false theory based on scientists own standards. You cannot eliminate possibilities before you even explore the question unless you are motivated by something other than finding the truth. Science will not even consider that the first man was created with "age", no matter how many of their aging theories fail. It really is a matter of faith either way you look at it.
Personally, I don't care what you believe. I am offended that darwinists are so religious in their beliefs that they won't even allow a debate. One side will debate, one side won't. Hmmm.
I'm afraid I can't give you exact details, as it's been years since I read it, and my dog literally ate the book. (That was the same week he also ate the covers off one of my statistics books. It's quite something to discover a gold-lettered pile in your yard....)
However, I do remember my basic objections to the book. His analysis pushed very hard the idea that there is no racial component to intelligence. Unfortunately, Gould did not address the idea that the same evolutionary factors that drive physical racial differences, might also affect intelligence (which under evolutionary theory is an evolved physical trait).
Rather, he "proved" his point by pointing out the flawed testing methodology of those who claimed that there are racial differences in intelligence.
While that is a valuable service, it does not answer the mail on the underlying evolutionary question of racial differences in intelligence.
Again, I'm sorry I can't discuss specifics.
Creationists don't scoff at geology. Creationists scoff at the geologic column which is not a scientific contrivance since it ASSUMES evolutionary progression in its construction.
Evolutionists point to the geologic column as "proof" that macro evolution occurred, but the chart itself presupposes that macro evolution occurred in determining which layers belong on the bottom of the chart and which belong on the top. This is not scientific. Rather it is what happens when one discipline relies on another for support.
It is kind of like in the cartoons when Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd climb on top of each other until they are 30 feet in the air and realize they have no support, and then fall back down to the earth.
Why doesn't science use its analytical models, its computer simulations to take evolution to its logical next step and try to foretell what heaven is like. Or don't they believe in a kind of spiritual evolution? Perhaps they would be confronted with the questions they cannot answer: Why?
Sounds to me like we approach this from precisely the same viewpoint.
I, not being an Infinite Being, cannot presume to know through what means the Creator brought the universe to being.
steven jay gould, presuming vaingloriously to be a Being of Infinite Vision, however, is quite certain in the nonexistence of God and holds forth with The Greatest Certitude that evidence of evolution is proof that faith in God is folly.
I've read some of his work, I find his intellectual vision mypoic in the extreme, but what carries his work to marketability is an overweening pridefulness which evokes mental images of fleets of dirigibles supporting a vast fat head.
No, I dont KNOW how God made me and you, it is an act of faith that I believe. Just as gould beleives in the nonexistence of God through an identical leap of faith.
It is just amusing that he is too ignorant to recognize his religion as such.
This is a way of saying us normal folks can't possibly fathom what they're saying and how much smarter they are than us.
Sounded to me like Gould was saying it happened fast instead of slow. Does that pretty well sum it up?
Soon the NetGrammarPolitzei (NGRAMPO) will be allowed to view all facial recognization tapes and rule on correctness of grammar. (In all languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Chukchi, Roshani, and NaDene.)
Why?
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