Darwin's Dangerous Idea (50 page)

of a scientist who recognizes, as my high-school physics teacher once said, This chapter is about another myth—Stephen Jay Gould, Refuter of Or-that science, done right,
is
one of the humanities.

thodox Darwinism. Over the years, Gould has mounted a series of attacks on The title of Gould's monthly column comes from Darwin, the closing aspects of contemporary neo-Darwinism, and although none of these attacks sentence of
Origin of Species.

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
265

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been trying, defying the moral of Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf. This originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has earned him not just a credibility problem (among scientists), but also the has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple animosity of some of his colleagues, who have felt the sting of what they a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, consider to be undeserved public condemnation in the face of his influential and are being, evolved.

campaigns. As Robert Wright (1990, p. 30) puts it, Gould is "America's evolutionist laureate. If he has been systematically misleading Americans Anybody as prolific and energetic as Gould would surely have an agenda about what evolution is and what it means, that amounts to a lot of intel-beyond that of simply educating and delighting his fellow human beings lectual damage."

about the Darwinian view of life. In fact, he has had numerous agendas. He Has he done this? Consider the following. If you believe: has fought hard against prejudice, and particularly against the abuse of scientific research ( and scientific prestige ) by those who would clothe their (1) that adaptationism has been refuted or relegated to a minor role in political ideologies in the potent mantle of scientific respectability. It is evolutionary biology, or

important to recognize that Darwinism has always had an unfortunate power (2) that since adaptationism is "the central intellectual flaw of sociobi-to attract the most unwelcome enthusiasts—demagogues and psychopaths ology" ( Gould 1993a, p. 319 ), sociobiology has been utterly discred-and misanthropes and other abusers of Darwin's dangerous idea. Gould has ited as a scientific discipline, or

laid this sad story bare in dozens of tales, about the Social Darwinists, about ( 3) that Gould and Eldredge's hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium over-unspeakable racists, and most poignantly about basically good people who threw orthodox neo-Darwinism, or

got confused—seduced and abandoned, you might say—by one Darwinian (4) that Gould has shown that the fact of mass extinction refutes the siren or another. It is all too easy to run off half cocked with some poorly

"extrapolationism" that is the Achilles' heel of orthodox neo-understood version of Darwinian thinking, and Gould has made it a major Darwinism,

part of his life's work to protect his hero from this sort of abuse.

The irony is that his own strenuous efforts to protect Darwinism have
then what you believe is a falsehood.
If you believe any of these propositions, sometimes backfired. Gould has been a defender of his own brand of Dar-you are, however, in very good company—both numerous and intellectually winism, but an ardent opponent of what he has called "ultra-Darwinism" or distinguished company. Quine once said of a misguided critic of his work,

"hyper-Darwinism." What is the difference? The uncompromising "no-

"He reads with a broad brush." We are all apt to do this, especially when we skyhooks-allowed" Darwinism I have presented is, by Gould's lights, hyper-try to construe in simple terms the take-home message of work outside our Darwinism, an extremist view that needs overthrowing. Since in fact it is, as I own field. We tend to read, with bold brushstrokes, what we want to find.

have said, quite orthodox neo-Darwinism, Gould's campaigns have had to Each of these four propositions expresses a verdict that is rather more take the form of calls for revolution. Time and again, Gould has announced decisive and radical than Gould may have intended, but together they from his bully-pulpit to a fascinated world of onlookers that neo-Darwinism compose a message that is out there, in many quarters. I beg to differ, so it is dead, supplanted by a revolutionary new vision—still Darwinian, but falls to me to dismantle the myth. Not an easy job, since I must painstakingly overthrowing the establishment view. It hasn't happened. As Simon Conway separate the rhetoric from the reality, all the while fending off—by Morris, one of the heroes of Gould's
Wonderful Life,
has said, "His views explaining away—the entirely reasonable presumption that an evolutionist of have done much to stir the established orthodoxies, even if, when the dust Gould's stature couldn't be
that
wrong in his verdicts, could he? Yes and no.

settles, the edifice of evolutionary theory still looks little changed" ( Conway The real Gould has made major contributions to evolutionary thinking, Morris 1991, p. 6).

correcting a variety of serious and widespread misapprehensions, but the Gould is not the only evolutionist to succumb to the urge of overdrama-mythical Gould has been created out of the yearnings of many Darwin-tization. Manfred Eigen and Stuart Kauffman—and there are others we dreaders, feeding on Gould's highly charged words, and this has encouraged, haven't considered—have also styled themselves at first as radical heretics.

in turn, his own aspirations to bring down "ultra-Darwinism," leading him Who wouldn't prefer one's contributions to be truly revolutionary? But into some misbegotten claims.

whereas Eigen and Kauffman, as we have seen, have moderated their rhetoric If Gould has kept crying wolf, why has he done this? The hypothesis I shall in due course, Gould has gone from revolution to revolution. So far, his defend is that Gould is following in a long tradition of eminent thinkers who declarations of revolution have all been false alarms, but he has kept on have been seeking skyhooks—and coming up with cranes. Since evolution-266 BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS

The Spandrel's Thumb
267

ary theory has made great progress in recent years, the task of making room dead? There is no more committed or brilliant adaptationist than John for a skyhook has become more difficult, raising the bar for any thinker who Maynard Smith, but here I think we see the master napping: he doesn't ask wants to find some blessed exemption. By following the repetition of theme himself this "why" question. After I began to notice that many of the most and variation in Gould's work, I will uncover a pattern: each failed attempt important contributions to evolutionary theory have been made by thinkers defines a small portion of the shadow of his quarry, until eventually the who were fundamentally ill-at-ease with Darwin's great insight, I could begin source of Gould's driving discomfort will be clearly outlined. Gould's ulti-to take seriously the hypothesis that Gould himself is one of these. Making mate target is Darwin's dangerous idea itself; he is opposed to the very idea the case for this hypothesis will take patience and hard work, but there's no that evolution is, in the end, just an algorithmic process.

avoiding it. The mythology about what Gould has shown and hasn't shown is It would be interesting to ask the further question of why Gould is so set so widespread that it will befog all the other issues before us if I don't do against this idea, but that is really a task for another occasion, and perhaps for what I can to disperse it first.

another writer. Gould himself has shown how to execute such a task. He has examined the underlying assumptions, fears, and hopes of earlier scientists, from Darwin himself through Alfred Binet, the inventor of IQ testing, to 2. THE SPANDREL'S THUMB

Charles Walcott, the (mis)classifier of the Burgess Shale fauna, to name just three of his best-known case histories. What hidden agendas— moral, political, religious—have driven Gould himself? Fascinating though this I
think I can see what is breaking down in evolutionary theory
—
the
question is, I am going to resist the temptation to try to answer it, though in
strict construction of the modern synthesis with its belief in pervasive
due course I will briefly consider, as I must, the rival hypotheses that have
adaptation, gradualism and extrapolation by smooth continuity from
been suggested. I have enough to do just defending the admittedly startling
causes of change in local populations to major trends and transitions in
claim that the pattern in Gould's failed revolutions reveals that America's
the history of life.

evolutionist laureate has always been uncomfortable with the fundamental

—STEPHEN JAY GOULD 1980b

core of Darwinism.

For years I was genuinely baffled by the ill-defined hostility to Darwinism
At issue is not the general idea that natural selection can act as a
that I encountered among many of my fellow academics, and although they
creative force; the basic argument, in principle, is sound. Primary doubt
cited Gould as their authority, I figured they were just wishfully misreading
centers on the subsidiary claims
—
gradualism and the adaptationist
him, with a little help from the mass media, always eager to obliterate
program.

subtlety and fan the flames of every minor controversy. It really didn't occur

—STEPHEN JAY GOULD 1982a

to me that Gould was often fighting on the other side. He himself has been victimized so often by this hostility. Maynard Smith mentions just one ex-Gould has done much to bring a central theme of Darwinism, that ample:

supposed perfection in design is a jury-rigged compromise adopting
some improbable pieces of anatomy, to general notice. But some of these
One cannot spend a lifetime working on evolutionary theory without be-essays contain hints that somehow the Darwinian explanation is only coming aware that most people who do not work in the field, and some
partly correct. But is this a serious attack? Not on a closer reading.

who do, have a strong wish to believe that the Darwinian theory is false.

—SIMON CONWAY MORSJS 1991

This was most recently brought home to me when my friend Stephen Gould, who is as convinced a Darwinist as I am, found himself the occasion Gould (1980b, 1982a) sees two main problem elements in the modern synthesis: of an editorial in the
Guardian
announcing the death of Darwinism, fol-

"pervasive adaptation" and "gradualism." And he sees them as related. How? He has lowed by an extensive correspondence on the same theme, merely be-given somewhat different answers over the years. We can begin with "pervasive cause he had pointed out some difficulties the theory still faces. [Maynard adaptation." To see what the issue is, we should return to the Gould and Lewontin Smith 1981, p. 221, as reprinted in Maynard Smith 1988.]

paper of 1979. The title is a good place to start: "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme." In addition to Why should such a "convinced Darwinist" as Gould keep getting himself their redefining of "Panglossian," they introduced another term, "spandrel," which has in trouble by contributing to the public misconception that Darwinism is proven

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The Spandrel's Thumb
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to be a highly successful coinage in one sense: it has spread through evolutionary biology and beyond. In a recent retrospective essay, Gould put it this way:

Ten years later, my friend Dave Raup ... said to me, "We have all been spandrelized." When your example becomes both generic and a different part of speech, you have won. Call those San Marco spandrels "Kleenex,"

"Jell-O," and a most emphatically non-metaphorical "Band-Aid." [Gould 1993a, p. 325.]

Ever since Gould and Lewontin, evolutionists (and many others) have spoken of spandrels, thinking that they knew what they were talking about.

What are spandrels? A good question. Gould wants to convince us that adaptation is not "pervasive," so he needs to have a term for the (presumably many) biological features that are not adaptations. They are to be called

"spandrels." Spandrels are, um, things that
aren't
adaptations, whatever they are. Gould and Lewontin have shown us, haven't they, that spandrels are ubiquitous in the biosphere? Not so. Once we clear away the confusions about what the term might mean, we will see that either spandrels are not ubiquitous after all, or they are
the normal basis
for adaptations, and hence no abridgment at all of "pervasive adaptation."

Gould and Lewontin's paper begins with two famous architectural examples, and since a crucial misstep is made at the outset, we must look closely at the text. ( One of the effects of classic texts is that people misremember them, having read them hurriedly once. Even if you are familiar with this oft-

© Alinari/Art Resources, N.Y.

reprinted beginning, I urge you to read it again, slowly, to see how the FIGURE 10.1. One of the spandrels