sullster

The passing of Steven Jay Gould, even though at a relatively young age, has me wondering who is going to take the places of the popular advocates of evolution. Richard Dawkins is still hale and healthy and there are others from the neo-Darwin school still going strong. Yet, the forces of darkness and irreason will need new and younger opponents for the battles of the future.

Young evolutionists. Where are you? Who are you? Are you ready to take the stage?

Every new generation has to pick up the tools of science lest the forces of obscuritanism and irrationality blurr reality. Who are those young minds which will continue the science of natural selection?

lpetrich

Massimo Pigliucci?

RufusAtticus

Me! Or at least I'd like to be that good of a scientist when I get into my carrer.

~~RvFvS~~

Valentine Pontifex

<a href="http://www.carlzimmer.com/author.html" target="_blank">Carl Zimmer</a> looks fairly young. He has done some good work on popular level evolution writing.

But lets not forget that people are not recognized to have the stature of Gould or Dawkins until they have a track record. Who is going to be the next great writer of biological science for the lay public? In ten years or so I will probably be able to tell you. But then again you probably will not have to ask.

pseudobug

I really hate to say this, but as famous as Gould was--and his fame was due to his popular writings (outside of evolutionary science), not his science--most people don't have a clue as to who he was unless they had some passing interest in the field of evolution or snail biology.

If one is not terribly interested in evolution or the evolution/creation debate, most people have never heard of him. In a way, it is like most scientists. While the individual scientist may have heard of people who are lumanaries in their field (or one you are interested in as a layperson or scientist)-- the rest of science, much less the layperson-- has barely heard of them.

I do think it would be good to have a "voice" to interpolate the findings of science to the common man as well as Gould did--that is always useful for science. That niche will likely be filled by someone as well. It is, after all, empty. If the person(s) that fill that niche are half as articulate and entertaining as Gould; we will all be enriched by their contributions if we choose to be.

Coragyps

I would vote for some of you kids on this forum - several of you appear to me to have the potential to carry that torch. I don't know about 300 essays of the quality of Gould's with no missed deadlines, though. That's nearly superhuman.

bluefugue

But if you do have a passing interest in evolution, in America at least, he is the first one you hear about. I first heard Gould's name in high school and for years associated it simply with "punctuated equilibria." It wasn't until I started reading up on the topic a couple of years ago that I learned about Dawkins, Mayr, Ridley, Futuyma, and those sort of people. Gould is surely the most famous evolutionary writer on this side of the pond, as Dawkins perhaps is on the other side.

But to the average joe, it is probably true that someone like Carl Sagan is better known. Perhaps the reason for that is Sagan's focus (cosmology) is less obviously threatening in an American culture that has perhaps been cowed by Christians who take offense every time the word "evolution" is mentioned.