David Gergen interviewed Steven Jay Gould, who died yesterday, back in 1996. The interview highlights what I liked about him: how he clarifies what this scary thing natural selection means, and his polymath mind.
Pinker, Dennet, and Dawkins — the heart of evolutionary biology’s batting order — often denegrated Gould’s writings as trivial. However, having read Gould’s books for laypeople such as Wonderful Life, I was better able to appreciate what they were writing.
The heart of Wonderful Life is the realization that there was no guarantee that selection would result in people, and the notion of a “Great Chain of Being” is just a notion.
I’m going to miss him.
Update: Feh, appologize for the previously frelled version of this post.
