gould dies at 60

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 gould dies at 60
by ScottH9999
21 May 2002 17:48 UTC



But it is also true that Gould himself had some weaknesses. Especially in
recent years he seemed to lean toward compromising with religion, or
accomodating science to religion. This was sad to see.

^^^^^

CB: Perhaps immediately impending death...you know

^^^^^^^^
-clip-


An interesting thing about this theory of "punk-e", however, and one which
Gould himself sometimes acknowledged, is that it is really only the
application of a long-established more general principle of Marxist
dialectics to the field of evolution. That is, Marxists going back to Marx
and Engels themselves, have traditionally held that major change takes place
through qualitative leaps.

^^^^^

CB: Yes ! I have been saying this for years on "these" lists. I once had a quote from Lenin anticipating that Darwin's complete gradualism would be surpassed by later science.   Evolution is actually Evolution-Revolution.

Punctuated equilibrium was , not surprisingly, codiscovered by Soviet paleontologists.

Biologist Phil Gasper once pointed out to us:

Writing about punctuated equilibrium in *The Panda's Thumb* Gould writes:

"If gradualism is more a product of Western thought than a fact of nature,
then we should consider alternate philosophies of change to enlarge our
realm of constraining prejudices. In the Soviet Union, for example,
scientists are trained with a very different philosophy of change-the
so-called dialectical laws, reformulated by Engels from Hegel's philosophy.
The dialectical laws are explicitly punctuational.... Eldredge and I were
fascinated to learn that many Russian paleontologists support a model
similar to our punctuated equlibria." (pp.184-5)

In a review of Lewontin et al., *Not In Our Genes* reprinted in *An Urchin
in the Storm* Gould writes:

"...we cannot factor a complex social situation into so much biology on one
side, and so much culture on the other. We must seek to understand the
emergent and irreducible properties arising from an inextricable
interpenetration of genes and environments. In short, we must use what so
many great thinkers call, but American fashion dismisses as political
rhetoric from the other side, a dialectical approach.

"Dialectical thinking should be taken more seriously by Western scholars,
not discarded because some nations of the second world have constructed a
cardboard version as an official political doctrine. The issues that it
raises are, in another form, the crucial questions of reductionism versus
holism, now so much under discussion throughout biology....

"When presented as guidelines for a philosophy of change, not as dogmatic
precepts true by fiat, the three classical laws of dialectics embody a
holistic vision that views change as interaction among components of
complete systems, and sees the components themselves not as a priori
entities, but as both products of and inputs to the system" (pp.153-4)

See also his comments on Engels in *Ever Since Darwin* (pp.210-11) and
*Urchin* (pp.111-12). Gould is not one of those scientists who thinks
dialectically without knowing it.




^^^^^


(Thus water after it is heated up gradually,
suddenly begins to boil. And even when you look at gradual change itself on a
close enough scale you will see that it is ALSO made up of numerous small
dialectical leaps--such as when water molecules suddenly acquire a surge in
energy by contact with the tea kettle or other hotter water molecules. This
however does not mean that there IS no such thing as gradual change--only
that it changes our understanding of what gradual change really amounts to in
the final analysis.)

(For further discussion of this aspect of the dialectics of change, see the
last couple sections of chapter 31 of my book on the mass line at:
http://members.aol.com/TheMassLine/MLch31.htm )

Since it was Marxist philosophy that very likely gave rise to the original
germ of the idea behind the theory of punctuated equilibria in the first
place, I find it somewhat ironic that Michael should say that this theory
should have in turn influenced him and others in the area of political
economy. The question in my mind is why didn't Marxist philosophy have a more
DIRECT influence here?

I don't want to go too far with this, because for one thing Michael just made
an off-hand comment here, and for another thing I have not even read much of
Michael's books (although I am working on one of them, "Marx's Crises
Theory"). I do not fully understand his thought processes and where he is
coming from, let alone those of all the other contributors to this mail
group. And I know I have much to learn from all of you.

But Marx was first a philosopher, and I am certain that his philosophical
outlook infused and and helped form his economic theories--as well as his
method of presentation of those theories. I doubt if people can deeply
understand Marx's political economy unless they also have a pretty good grasp
of his philosophical standpoint and method. (Lenin and others have also
emphasized this point.) And I suspect that many radical economists are pretty
weak when it comes to understanding and utilizing Marxist dialectics.

Just some thoughts...

--Scott Harrison