Ms. Siv

I did e-mail him once (a few months back) and got a few prompt replies and an unpublished article, but thats about it.
I wish there were more, but ....

- Sivakami.

bluefugue

To hear Dawkins' side of his beef with Gould, read the chapter of Blind Watchmaker entitled "Puncturing Punctuationism." Dawkins does not dispute "punk eek" per se, but simply argues that there is no reason why it cannot co-exist with gradualism, and that Gould and Eldredge hyped it to be a bigger deviation from classical Neo-Darwinism than it really was. Dawkins' comments make perfect sense to me, but I have not read any response by Gould (if he has made one).

Dawkins also bashes Gould a bit in "Unweaving The Rainbow," arguing that Gould's essays occasionally mislead people as to the state of evolutionary theory. Along similar lines is an essay I read (not sure where -- New Yorker or New York Magazine I think) entitled "The Accidental Creationist," which asserts that Gould has inadvertently fed the creationists lots of misleading quotes about the "lack of agreement" within evolutionary science...

Quetzal

I think the Dawkins/Gould clash is more a clash of personalities. Gould (as good a scientist and writer as he is), has a humongous ego. He seems to take any critique of anything he writes as a major insult. Dawkins is actually pretty mild by comparison - but will respond if provoked.

Most of the actual science relates to Gould's attempts to define a "pluralist" approach to evolution (i.e., that natural selection alone cannot account for it). Dawkins is an "orthodox" neo-Darwinist.

The thing to remember is that this personality conflict has basically been going on for 30 years (since Gould's book on the Burgess Shales). Gould is really feisty, and pulls absolutely no punches in his rhetoric. Gould, in a 12 June 1997 New York Review of Books review of Daniel Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (which criticized aspects of Gould's work) said the book was "the ultras' philosophical manifesto of pure adaptionism" (Gould characterizes Dennett as "Dawkins's Lapdog" in a reference to Huxley as "Darwin's Bulldog"). Maynard Smith responded to the review, "[Gould] is a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering about". Gould responded that Maynard Smith had gotten caught up in "apocalyptic ultra-Darwinian fervor", and that he was "saddened that his [Maynard Smith's] once impressive critical abilities seem to have become submurged within the simplistic dogmatism epitomized" by Dennett's book.

Obviously, scientists ain't necessarily gentlemen.

Bottom line:

Gould (plus Eldridge, Lewontin, etc): Natural selection is the most important, but not the only, mechanism of evolution.

Dawkins (plus Dennett, Maynard Smith, Williams, etc): Gould's ideas are neither revolutionary nor any great modification of natural selection. Even PE is just gradualism (only faster).

(If you're interested in more details on the conflict, read "The Evolutionists: The Struggle for Darwin's Soul" by Richard Morris, WH Freeman & Co, NY, 2001).

Ms. Siv

Informative post, Morpho.

Scientists are, of course, human

Thats why the scientific method is so valuable, you know ... because it recognises human fallibility and builds corrective frameworks for it.

- Sivakami.

bluefugue

I have noticed that Dawkins and Dennett seem to agree on quite a lot. I guess they are close friends as well. Gould is not the only one who dislikes Dennett. VR pioneer Jaron Lanier, who frequently positions himself as the "I hate to rain on your parade..." guy among the futurists at <a href="http://www.edge.org" target="_blank">www.edge.org</a> (Pinker, Dennett, Dawkins, Kurzweil, Dyson, etc.), has gotten into arguments with Dennett about the nature of consciousness, the possibility of AI achieving consciousness, etc. At one point Lanier even commented (facetiously, I imagine) that he suspected Dennett might be a zombie (i.e., a human with no subjective experience of consciousness). As for Dennett's difficult book Consciousness Explained, legendary wit Martin Gardner commented that it explained everything... except consciousness.

It is indeed fun to watch the best and brightest snipe at one another.

Speaking of the "Darwin's Bulldog" reference, that reminds me of a vivid (if less-than-flattering) description of Dawkins from John Horgan's book, The End of Science (which also discusses the Dawkins/Gould feud a bit):

DMB

Re: 11 year-olds. I am a mother, though mine are now much older, and have also taught (bright) 11-year-olds.

I have the Royal Institution Xmas Lectures on video, and they are very close to Mt Improbable. I went to the launch of the latter, which followed not all that long after the lectures. Dawkins gave a talk (to an adult audience) about the book and this talk certainly seemed to me to be a reprise of the Xmas Lectures, without all the demonstrations and colourful gimmicks. (At the Xmas Lectures he even had a model of Mount Improbable).

Re: Dennett. I gave a copy of Darwin's Dangerous Idea to an adult friend who knew zilch about evolution and she found it interesting, entertaining and informative. I have to say that I found Consciousness Explained pretty hard going.

It is some time since I read Darwin's Dangerous Idea, but doesn't Dennett actually debunk some of Gould's flights of fancy in his popular writing?

Quetzal

He does indeed - that's what ticked Gould off so badly. He spends an entire chapter hammering Gould's (and Lewontin's) idea of spandrels (exaptations). Dennett expends a great number of words essentially saying, "So what?". There are lots of organisms that have extra bits, bells, and whistles that have no apparent adaptive function. Nobody denies it. Gould admittedly tries to make a big deal out of these traits in his writings. Dennett essentially says there's nothing special about it - their presence is thoroughly consistent with random mutations and natural selection (Dennett's "evolutionary algorithm"). Dennett claims Gould's "self-styled revolutions" aren't revolutionary.

I think Dennett actually does go overboard more than a bit - he questions Gould's motivations, politics, and suggests that Gould has some kind of hidden agenda - possibly even a religious motivation. Not really useful in a scientific debate, n'est-ce pas? Gould, of course (being the person he is) went ballistic. Can't really say I blame him, even if I lean more towards the standard neo-Darwinian synthesis than Gould's pluralism. (I just don't see what the big difference is...)

Ain't science fun?

Jayhawker Soule

Actually, for a layman at my age, keeping up with it is hard. But that's precisely why I appreciate you folks.