Socialist Action /July 2002
Stephen Jay Gould, a Man for All Seasons
By JEFF MACKLER
Steve Gould, among the nation's most prolific and likely its most popular
science writer, died of cancer on May 21. He was 60 years old. With the
publication of his magnum opus last year, the 1433-page "Structure
of Evolutionary Theory," he left to his colleagues and to others who
marvel at the nature of scientific endeavor a body of work that sets the
standard for brilliance of exposition, historical scope, and imagination.
The book was the product of Gould's decades-long effort to lay down in
detail the evolution of evolutionary theory. Gould's critical contribution
to this endeavor is, of course, included.
Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary theory, died 59 years
before Gould's birth. But Darwin was undoubtedly Gould's standard of excellence,
as evidenced by his years of recounting and assessing Darwin's personal
predilections and scientific life and times.
Gould never separated the personal and inseparable social factors that
helped to mold the scientist's viewpoint. In Darwin's case, for example,
Gould explained in detail how for many years Darwin consciously declined
to publish his theory of natural selection as the cornerstone for his evolutionary
theory due to his concern over offending the religious prejudices that dominated
his era.
Gould authored some 20 books, most of them best sellers. They were largely
compilations selected from the 300 essays he published without a miss, monthly,
over a period of some 25 years in Natural History magazine. One thousand
scientific papers, many associated with his life's work on the evolution
of mollusks, rounded out his contribution to scientific inquiry.
Gould took pride in making the "dull" science of paleontology
fascinating to people the world over. "Steve did not try to make it
simple," said Richard Lewontin, a professor of biology and zoology
at Harvard University, where Gould was a professor of zoology and geology
for 35 years. "He tried and succeeded in explaining the complications.
He made readers appreciate how messy and variable life is."
"Objectivity," said Gould in a statement that aptly summarizes
his approach to controversy, "cannot be equated with mental blankness;
rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting
them to especially harsh scrutiny-and also in a willingness to revise or
abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)." Gould
took as much pleasure in unearthing the flaws in his opponent's positions
as he did in admitting his own.
Approaching any subject from a materialist and historical standpoint,
Gould always managed to find something of merit in the most ridiculous of
arguments. He taught a generation of lay thinkers and sophisticates in his
own field that ideas, no matter how obscure or flawed, cannot be separated
from the prevailing social and political context that generated them.
Baseball and opera
Steve Gould was a lifelong friend, from our years together at Jamaica
High School in Queens, New York, where he graduated with a 94 average and
participated in the school's choir, to our five years at Antioch College
in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where we often scheduled competing lectures.
Steve held forth on "The Sex Life of the Clam," as I, also
a biology major, countered with "The Theory of Cuban Revolution."
Steve, in his late teens already an inventive thinker, often drew almost
a quarter of Antioch's 700 students to his fun-filled and well-prepared
lectures-while my efforts to win the same group to the ideas of Fidel and
Che or to other radical subjects of the day attracted far less.
Steve's lectures, as with his writing throughout his life, were crammed
with offbeat references to everything from his beloved baseball and his
fascination with Gilbert and Sullivan's witty and sarcastic operas to analyses
of long-rejected concepts of racial inferiority.
He drew great pleasure in taking dramatically far out positions on issues
of seemingly little import. He was a devout Yankee fan at a time when all
self-respecting New York kids whose parents hailed from radical traditions
championed the Brooklyn Dodgers, where Jackie Robinson was the first to
break baseball's color line.
As he participated in Antioch's choir he would hold forth that no worthwhile
classical music was produced after J.S. Bach. Of course, Steve knew that
he was out on a limb, but if you took him on, you had to expect some method
to his playful excess. Steve knew the difference between humorous over-stated
conviction and engagement in serious debates over critical issues in his
chosen profession.
Moreover, he was fascinated with the complex works of more modern composers
like Wagner, whose four-hour operas he immersed himself in even during the
last weeks of his life-when he participated in the Boston Cecilia, a choral
orchestral group that had held his loyalty for 30 years.
Our parents hailed from a generation of working-class and sometimes persecuted
New York Jews who were strongly influenced by the Stalinized Communist Party.
Mistakenly, they saw the CP as embodying a fundamental challenge to the
capitalist status quo of war, prejudice, and exploitation. As best they
could, they instilled in both of us a value system that rejected reaction
in all its manifestations.
Our parents often maneuvered to "broaden" our horizons and
experiences. Steve was sent to my house to pick up on the various seasonal
sports that preoccupied many kids of that era. A chubby and somewhat awkward
14-year-old, he gleefully joined my more agile friends and brother on the
neighborhood streets to learn the fundamentals of touch football and stickball.
In turn, I visited Steve's house, where we marveled at memorizing the
names of his extensive shell and mineral collection, meticulously organized
and displayed on a large bookshelf in his very modest "housing project"
living room entrance hall.
Punctuated equilibrium
Gould's central contribution to modern evolutionary thinking was his
theory of "punctuated equilibrium," a still controversial idea
with rapidly increasing adherents, that earned him the label "neo-Darwinist."
Darwin's theory of evolution is premised on the concept of gradualism.
His careful observations of very small differences within species was coupled
with his understanding that all species produce far more offspring than
can possibly survive. As Steve used to remind us in college, "a 12-inch
species of Virginia oyster produces 250,000 eggs per year, but, on average,
one survives to maturity."
Over long periods of time, Darwin concluded, nature generally "selects"
to survive-from among all offspring produced by a species-those minute characteristic
differences that are best suited to the particular environment. This continuous
and gradual selection process, over millions of years and longer, results
in the formation of new species. This is the essence of Darwin's theory
of natural selection, the operative principle of species evolution.
Darwin's latter-day critics, especially those whose ideas emanated not
from scientific principle but from faith-based or religious notions, often
challenged his thesis based on the time factor. They argued that the slowness
of the pace of Darwin's selection process, even given the millions or billions
of years over which it operated, could not account for the vast number of
species that exist on the planet.
Darwin's theory, while fundamentally correct, was given a boost with
the discovery that sudden and more dramatic changes in members of individual
species could be observed in a relatively short period of time. The discovery
of these sudden changes, mutations, collapsed the time period necessary
for the development of new species.
Gould's punctuated equilibrium advanced the debate further. In 1972,
when he and his lifelong colleague, Niles Eldridge, published their work,
"Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,"
they argued that the fossil record failed to demonstrate Darwin's gradualism.
Instead, it recorded long periods, in the millions of years and longer,
of "stasis," or stability, punctuated by "rapid" evolutionary
bursts, perhaps over thousands of years, a virtual blink of an eye in geological
time.
The positive mutations that most scientists previously believed to be
the precursors to new species (some 99 percent of mutations are lethal),
Gould argued, would most likely be "washed out" or "blended"
in the larger population and lost. They were not in and of themselves critical
to the emergence of new species.
But when a small portion of a species group became suddenly isolated
due to geographic factors that separated it from the rest of the population,
mutations stood a better chance of persisting. The gradual accumulation
of new mutations in this isolated population eventually led to the formation
of new species.
Punctuated equilibrium has found increasing support in the scientific
community. It is predicated on the occurrence of sudden cataclysmic changes
in the earth's surface and environment resulting from meteor or asteroid
bombardment, volcanic action, or other such factors that permanently separate
a smaller portion of a species population from its main group.
David Jablonski, chair of the committee on evolutionary biology at the
University of Chicago, noted that there is "an impressive array of
examples in the fossil record, from snails to horses" that verifies
Gould's theory.
Jablonski reports on the work of a scientist who analyzed the evolutionary
"trees" of 34 different types of scallops. He found only one that
displayed gradual evolution over time. "The remaining 33," says
Jablonski, "stayed pretty much the same from generation to generation.
Another scientist found gradualism in only eight of 88 lineages of trilobites."
Gould's opponents, as with Darwin himself, respond that the incompleteness
of the fossil record best explains the absence of intermediate species,
not punctuated equilibrium. The debate is far from resolved, with Gould
himself modifying his contribution in light of new discoveries in the fossil
record.
Intelligent life in the universe?
Gould also broke new ground when he postulated that mutations were not
limited to single gene or minor aberration. He postulated that under certain
circumstances a simultaneous series of mutations could rapidly produce an
entirely new feature in an existing species. Again, however, the likelihood
that such a major and qualitative change would be passed on depended more
on its relative isolation in a subgroup than on the intrinsic merits of
the change in form.
Gould was among the most vehement critics of the search for the evolutionary
basis of human behavior, the so-called science of sociobiology. The fundamental
character of human beings, he argued with passion, can best be explained
by social environment as opposed to our genetic constitution. Social characteristics
are the product of social environment. We are not inherently anything-good
or evil, greedy or generous.
Steve Gould was an expert witness in the modern day rerun of the Scopes
evolution trial in Tennessee more than a decade ago when his court testimony
successfully served to relegate the "creationist" version of the
origin of life to a faith-based belief having nothing to do with scientific
inquiry. He lectured in apartheid South Africa, debunking theories of racial
superiority in the face of a regime whose power was publicly premised on
that assumption.
Gould liked nothing more than to apply the scientific principles that
had become an integral part of his being to topical questions of the day.
He joined his astronomer friend Carl Sagan in disputing the proposition
that intelligent life exists anywhere in the universe.
He rejected the notion that evolution had a direction or purpose, or
that life proceeds necessarily from lower to higher forms. "Human brains
and bodies did not evolve along a direct and inevitable ladder, but by a
circuitous and tortuous route, and fortunately suited to later needs,"
he noted.
Gould continued: "The improbabilities of history proclaim that all
species are unique and unrepeatable in detail. Evolutionary theory, as a
science of history, does deny the specific argument for humanoids on other
worlds."
Despite his skepticism, however, Gould, like Sagan, supported modest
funding for the SETI project (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).
"I must justify the attempt at such a long shot," he said, "by
stating that a positive result would be the most cataclysmic event in our
entire intellectual history. Curiosity impels, and makes us human, Might
it compel others as well?"
Steve was not unacquainted with the "long shot." Indeed, when
his doctors told him some 20 years ago that his chances of surviving mesothelioma,
a deadly cancer of the outer lining of the lungs, was less than 10 percent,
he was undaunted. He found a new meaning to the term statistics and indeed
found a method of attacking his illness.
This involved the direct application onto his lungs of the necessary
chemotherapy drugs, allowing for the utilization of a dosage strength far
in excess of what can be tolerated with normal intravenous therapy. Steve
beat the statistical odds and exclaimed with the characteristic sarcasm
and biting humor of a staunch atheist, "Not yet, Lord, not yet!"
Gould and political activism
Not long after Socialist Action was formed, almost 20 years ago, I called
Steve to learn more about the flawed science behind Ronald Reagan's proposed
Star Wars project. As expected, he was entirely skeptical and ready with
a stream of answers to technical questions as to the feasibility of developing
any system to "protect" the U.S. from even one of the 30,000 nuclear-tipped
missiles that the former USSR then possessed.
The discussion was the occasion for renewing a friendship that distance
had put on the back burner for several years. Steve astonished me by offering
Socialist Action newspaper the right to reprint anything he had written.
While we never had occasion to accept his proposal, I remain to this day
amazed at his generosity.
And generous he was. His lecture fees were often applied as grants to
promising students who had sought his assistance to continue their studies.
Gould was no stranger to Marxism but essentially remained aloof from
any active participation in socialist or any other political organizations.
He was for a while a more than occasional lecturer at the New York Marxist
School's Brecht Forum, where his scientific wizardry fascinated a generation
who saw in his materialist methodology a broader tool for investigation
of society more generally-and indeed for changing it.
Gould did not shy away from citing with enthusiasm and agreement the
work of Marx's cothinker, Friedrich Engels, whose essay, "The Part
Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man," was considered
by Gould as seminal in rejecting the "idealistic" and "Western"
prejudice regarding the primacy of the brain in human evolution. (See "Ever
Since Darwin," W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1977.)
In the same work, Gould cites Marx and Engels in regard to their recognition
of Darwin's employment of the materialist method: "The most ardent
materialists of the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels, were quick to recognize
what Darwin had accomplished and to exploit its radical content. In 1869
Marx wrote to Engels about Darwin's 'Origin,' 'Although it is developed
in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in
natural history for our view.'"
Gould continues: "Marx later offered to dedicate volume 2 of 'Das
Capital' to Darwin, but Darwin gently declined, stating that he did not
want to imply approval of a work he had not read."
My last contact with Steve Gould was a few years ago when he readily
agreed to put his name to and help finance a full-page New York Times advertisement
demanding justice and a new trial for the innocent U.S. political prisoner,
Mumia Abu-Jamal.
He was an ardent opponent of the evils created by capitalism and employed
his pen and wit to ridicule social injustice wherever he saw it. But he
was not a joiner.
I always guessed that Steve, like so many brilliant intellectuals in
the academic world, understood, perhaps unconsciously, that had he committed
himself to the social/political equivalent of his scientific approach to
change, that is to revolutionary Marxism, the doors that he pried open in
the scientific world with such difficulty would not be so amenable to movement.
Indeed, he has stated: "Scientists have power by virtue of the respect
commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse
that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal-why not provide
that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference
in ethics or politics? But we cannot, lest we lose the very respect that
tempted us in the first place" ("Bully for Brontosaurus,"
pp. 429-430).
It is nevertheless evident that Gould was a serious practitioner of dialectical
materialism, the method of inquiry and science of change applicable to both
the natural and social world. Although like most scientists of his generation,
Steve largely limited his dialectical inquiry to the realm of science, he
championed its application elsewhere.
In a remarkable tribute that concludes his "Ever Since Darwin"
chapter on Engels's contribution to an understanding of the evolution of
the human species, Gould affirms: "If we took Engels's message to heart
and recognized our belief in the superiority of pure research for what it
is-namely social prejudice-then we might forge among scientists the union
between theory and practice that a world teetering dangerously near the
brink so desperately needs."
Gould justly saw himself as a front-line fighter against the status quo
everywhere. He aptly dedicated his seminal work to his colleagues, Niles
Eldridge and Elizabeth Vrba: "May we always be the Three Musketeers
/ Prevailing with panache."
Socialist Action /July 2002 |