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Stephen Jay Gould was born on September 10, 1941, in New York City. He was educated at Antioch College in Ohio and then trained as a paleontologist, doing his doctoral work at Columbia University in New York. His first academic position was at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained for the rest of his life, later adding to his responsibilities a curatorship in paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Gould received many honors, including numerous honorary doctoral degrees, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gould's early scientific work focused on land snails in Bermuda, and at first he worked in a fairly conventional Darwinian fashion, seeing natural selection as the main cause of evolutionary change. But soon, he and paleontologist Niles Eldredge began trying to break the paradigm of conventional Darwinism, which sees the fossil record as essentially flowing from one form to another, with all gaps due to inadequacies in the record. Gould and Eldredge forwarded a theory of punctuated equilibrium, arguing that the fossil record shows stasis (no appreciable change, for periods of time, in some particular line of organisms), followed by very rapid change. The gaps in the record therefore reflect real gaps in the fossilization process.

Gould held to the theory of punctuated equilibrium throughout his life, although the causal mechanism for the process was often in flux and not entirely clear. For a while, Gould floated the idea of saltations (real macromutations that jump from one species to another), but this theory was criticized by population geneticists, causing Gould to look for other non-Darwinian, nonselective mechanisms. Together with molecular evolutionist Richard Lewontin, Gould argued that many aspects of organic nature are nonadaptive and could not have been produced by selection. Lewontin and Gould argued that many features of plants and animals are like spandrels (the tops of columns in medieval churches); they are simply byproducts of the building process and thus without any great biological significance.

Much of Gould's work was not presented directly to his fellow professionals. He was a master at writing for a general audience, especially in essay form. For thirty years he wrote a monthly column called "This View of Life" in the magazine Natural History. In this column, Gould explored hundreds of different topics, not all of them related to biology. The essays were collected in several very successful volumes, beginning with Ever Since Darwin (1977). Gould also wrote books on general topics, including the history of brain science in The Mismeasure of Man (1981) and the fossils of the Burgess Shale in Canada in Wonderful Life (1989). At the scholarly level, Gould published numerous articles on the nature of the fossil record, usually in the journal Paleobiology, and the book Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1977) on the importance of development. Just before he died, Gould completed The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), a comprehensive book covering all of his thoughts about evolution. In this last book, Gould turned to the history of science, as he had often done earlier, not merely to develop his ideas but to demonstrate that he was part of a respectable tradition, while his opponents were not.

Gould was admired by the general public, but many of his fellow evolutionists were less open in their praise, perhaps because of professional jealousy combined with discomfort at Gould's arrogant nature. Some critics felt that Gould's ideas were, scientifically speaking, somewhat shallow: Detailed examination did not always bear them out. By the time of Gould's death, consensus on the Eldredge-Gould claim about the nature of the fossil record was that it probably has merit, although there are many exceptions. The lack of a convincing causal hypothesis for punctuated equilibrium certainly counts against it. However, Gould's early stress on the importance of development for a full understanding of the evolutionary process seems fully borne out as molecular biologists turn their interests to questions of history.

Gould admitted that he always wrote with a concern for the morality beneath the surface of his science. A nonpracticing Jew with a Marxist background (the lasting influence of which was a matter of debate), he felt strongly about all matters of prejudice. In the 1970s, Gould was one of the leaders against sociobiology's attempts to explain human nature in terms of biology. Gould argued that sociobiology was not real science, but simply conservative ideology in fancy dress. For him, culture is essentially a spandrel, with no real biological importance. Undoubtedly the Lewontin-Gould attack on adaptation was motivated in part by this continued critique. Sociobiologists argued strongly that human nature is directly adaptive, such that men and women, for example, are psychologically as well as physically different because of their biology. Gould was determined to counter such views.

Gould also saw claims about biological progress as being part and parcel of the offensive ideology against which he fought, which set humans at the top of the animal hierarchy, with white gentiles at the top of the human chain. Gould saw Darwinism, with its emphasis on the success of the fittest, as badly bound up with claims about progress, and this was another reason to attack adaptationism. Many of Gould's popular works, especially The Mismeasure of Man and Wonderful Life, were explicit critiques on progressionism. Whether or not Gould was correct, such views brought him into conflict with many of his fellow evolutionists. British science writer Richard Dawkins, an ardent Darwinian and progressionist, took strong offence at Gould's thinking, which Dawkins felt distorted and belittled the opposition. In one of his essays, Gould accused the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin of being responsible for the Piltdown hoax. Many critics, particularly many Catholics, took umbrage at this accusation, since Gould's evidence was slim. Careful examination of the essay, however, shows that Gould's real intent may have been to read Teilhard out of science. As the twentieth century's most ardent progressionist, Teilhard had to be exposed as a man without moral or scientific authority.

Despite this attack on Teilhard, Gould's attitude toward religion was far more complex than that of a typical atheist. Although a nonbeliever, Gould had a passion for singing oratorio, which was equaled by his passion for baseball. He was, in a sense, a deeply religious man, despite the absence of any formal theology. He knew the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, very well, and he frequently used biblical stories or allusions to illustrate points in his science writing. As an ardent evolutionist, Gould stood firmly against biblical literalists and creationists, and in 1981 he served as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union in its successful litigation against a creationist law that had been passed in Arkansas. One of his last books, Rocks of Ages (1999), deals explicitly with issues of science and religion. Gould takes the position of the neo-orthodox (like Langdon Gilkey), arguing that science and religion are different dimensions for understanding and feeling—he calls them magisteria—and hence can not come into conflict if properly understood.

Unfortunately, Gould never really explored the ways in which conflict is avoided, and one is left with the impression that any compromise is going to favor religion. Gould's worldview would not allow miracles, for instance, and hence it would be necessary to interpret the resurrection symbolically or metaphorically. Such an approach may be acceptable to some Christians, but not to all, or indeed to most. In a way, therefore, Gould comes across as a logical positivist who is prepared to allow a role for religion as long as it is confined to sentiment, feeling, and morality, but makes no claims about matters of fact.

Gould died on May 20, 2002, in New York City. It is difficult to make long-term predictions about his lasting influence, although he will surely always be celebrated as a brilliant popular writer. It is less likely that he will be remembered as a significant scientist or as a major player in the debate about science and religion.

See also ADAPTATION; CREATIONISM; DARWIN, CHARLES; EVOLUTION, BIOLOGICAL; POSITIVISM, LOGICAL; SOCIOBIOLOGY; TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, PIERRE

MICHAEL RUSE