Re:About the origins of the equals sign
by mechanical_fish on Friday September 05, 2008 @08:31AM
(#295799)
Thanks. I was thinking about dropping stronger hints of this, actually -- I distinctly recall seeing various arguments of Gould's being torn to shreds by Dawkins and/or Dennett, and I have gradually developed the habit of taking my extensive collection of Gould's books (given to me as gifts), stacking them in a little pile on my shelf, and then actually reading something else -- but I am neither educated enough in evolutionary biology nor recent enough in my reading to pull a specific quote, and the last thing we need is more heat and less light from a total non-biologist like myself.
Also, I haven't read an essay that is quite so direct as this one that you link to. I'd point out that this link illustrates my point: When scientists get down to business and talk about each other's work, they do not mince words. It's kind of refreshing, actually.
John Maynard Smith, possibly the preeminent evolutionary theorist of our era:
"Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory."
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/beware-of-gould.html