BY CODY MOSER
It has become apparent of late that people are still very polarized in their opinions of the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. On one side there are evolutionary psychologists and I.Q. researchers who hold very strong negative opinions about Gould, particularly his book The Mismeasure of Man,1 on the history of I.Q. testing and the concept of intelligence. There are also those who do not embrace Gould’s extreme position on the role of the environment in shaping human action. On the other side there are evolutionary morphologists and paleontologists who appreciate Gould’s contributions to evolutionary theory, historians of science who recognize his original contributions to the role of culture and society in the development of scientific theories, and those who feel strongly aligned with Gould’s ideas about human nature, particularly as it relates to the role of culture and society in how lives turn out. Seventeen years after Gould’s untimely death from cancer at age 61, we are seeing a resurgence of strong opinions about him and his career.
It is unfortunate that Gould’s legacy may forever be entangled with his biases, especially because his important contributions in many technical areas of evolutionary biology were not so tainted.We all have biases, of course, but Gould’s were particularly strong and unquestionably influenced some of his scientific work. Recently, the philosopher of science Nathan Cofnas collected the harshest assessments of Gould made by other evolutionary biologists to summarize the worst of what his colleagues thought of him—the most quoted being by the renowned evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith: