The Panda's Thumb

Stephen Jay Gould

Evolution is irreversible; signs of ancestry are always preserved; convergence, however impressive, is always superficial.

In reading Schweber's detailed account of the moments preceding Darwin's formulation of natural selection, I was particularly struck by the absence of deciding influence from his own field of biology. The immediate precipitators were a social scientist, an economist, and a statistician. If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understand of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense--the debate about angels on pinheads--makes sense once you realize the theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number. In certain theological systems, the corporeality or noncorporeality of angels is an important matter indeed.

But I respect Kirkpatrick both for his sponges and for his numinous nummulosphere. It is easy to dismiss a crazy theory with laughter that debars any attempt to understand a man's motivation--and the nummulosphere is a crazy theory. I find that few men of imagination are not worth my attention. Their ideas may be wrong, even foolish, but their methods often repay a close study. Few honest passions are not based upon some valid perception of unity or some anomaly worthy of note. The different drummer often beats a fruitful tempo.

Gould's work, in addition to being very accessible biology and natural history, also carries a valuable tone: Gould sounds impressively fair. Often when I read science or history, or almost anything that claims to be non-fiction, I am most struck by the human capacity to be wrong. It seems that given a choice, we always choose the wrong answer. Gould's value lies in his ability to see, without ridicule or pride, the folly of past generations. Gould chronicles the physiometrists of the nineteenth century, complete with their repulsive racism, and yet manages to find room for the context and thus to find the value in their bullshit. It is not so much a magnanimous stance that reviews the many points at which humans have chosen to stick their heads in the sand, but a humility that recognizes we are probably wrong on a good many counts ourselves. Gould recognizes that dismissing another person's thought is the easiest mode of life, but certainly not the pathway to wisdom.