I am perfectly willing to buy that Gould’s scientific writings are more defensible than his popular writings.
J Thomas,
In my later comment I did not repeat my earlier comment. There I had specified, “one of the top ten ideas in the last half century,” not of all time. So, Weber’s Law dates from the 19th century, and those of Gause and Fisher from the 1930s. Not relevant. Still waiting for someone to come up with something other than coevolutions, which, as I have already pointed out, is definitely in Darwin, if not the term, neologized by Ehrlich just as Gould and Eldredge neologized punctuated equilibrium, whereas the latter is only ephemerally in Darwin, at best, and only then in later editions of Origin of the Species.
A definition? That a substantial amount of speciation occurred during (geologically) relatively short periods of time, between which were long periods of relative stasis without actual speciation, although gradual changes were always occurring. Gould himself in TSOET emphasizes that p.e is not in contradiction with the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. And I know from talking to some of the developers of that theory that they do not disagree with that statement of his. Rather the issue is seeing this particular outcome as widespread and important rather than as some weird sideshow not even openly discussed, much less labeled. Sorry, but Gould and Eldredge did in fact make a theoretical breakthrough of great importance. Heck, Einstein himself argued that relativity was already implicit in the work of Galileo.
windy,
You are correct about reciprocal altruism. But that does not undo the more general argument. Apologies for getting sloppy, but indeed plenty of people are taking multi-level evolution seriously. And, more to the point, it remains the case the Eliezer is simply dead wrong about the consensus of evolutionary theorists regarding the status of Gould. Again, one might as well make claims about the historical significance of Milton Friedman based on the opinions of Marxist economists. That is effectively the equivalent of what Eliezer attempted here in this post.
BTW, creationists did use Gould at a certain point based on his rhetoric criticizing “fundamentalist Darwinism” to dump on Darwinism and evolutionary theory in general. This probably did feed into the extreme annoyance by some evolutionary theorists with Gould at one point.
Douglas,
I am perfectly willing to buy that Gould’s scientific writings are more defensible than his popular writings.
J Thomas,
In my later comment I did not repeat my earlier comment. There I had specified, “one of the top ten ideas in the last half century,” not of all time. So, Weber’s Law dates from the 19th century, and those of Gause and Fisher from the 1930s. Not relevant. Still waiting for someone to come up with something other than coevolutions, which, as I have already pointed out, is definitely in Darwin, if not the term, neologized by Ehrlich just as Gould and Eldredge neologized punctuated equilibrium, whereas the latter is only ephemerally in Darwin, at best, and only then in later editions of Origin of the Species.
A definition? That a substantial amount of speciation occurred during (geologically) relatively short periods of time, between which were long periods of relative stasis without actual speciation, although gradual changes were always occurring. Gould himself in TSOET emphasizes that p.e is not in contradiction with the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. And I know from talking to some of the developers of that theory that they do not disagree with that statement of his. Rather the issue is seeing this particular outcome as widespread and important rather than as some weird sideshow not even openly discussed, much less labeled. Sorry, but Gould and Eldredge did in fact make a theoretical breakthrough of great importance. Heck, Einstein himself argued that relativity was already implicit in the work of Galileo.
windy,
You are correct about reciprocal altruism. But that does not undo the more general argument. Apologies for getting sloppy, but indeed plenty of people are taking multi-level evolution seriously. And, more to the point, it remains the case the Eliezer is simply dead wrong about the consensus of evolutionary theorists regarding the status of Gould. Again, one might as well make claims about the historical significance of Milton Friedman based on the opinions of Marxist economists. That is effectively the equivalent of what Eliezer attempted here in this post.
BTW, creationists did use Gould at a certain point based on his rhetoric criticizing “fundamentalist Darwinism” to dump on Darwinism and evolutionary theory in general. This probably did feed into the extreme annoyance by some evolutionary theorists with Gould at one point.