On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
>
> Stephen Jay Gould is presently engaged in an intellectual battle
> against what he calls "Darwinian fundamentalism". This is not the
> socio-biology of the mid-70s led by E.O.Wilson. It is a much
> stronger, influential movement, which uses the latest concepts in
> genetics to argue, with confindence and arrogance, that natural selection is
> the key cause of evolution and of human behavior. They include
> Dawkins, Dennett, and others. Gould counters them by insisting that
Don't forget the hot young star, Stephen Pinker. Reading his stuff
reminds me of Ayn Rand.
> Darwin himself never said that evolution is explainable according to
> a single factor like natural selection. This is what his theory of
> "punctuated equilibria" is all about: evolution is mainly
> characterized by stability with sudden, rapid modifications brought
> about by accidental environmental happenings.
>
> Wilson now has these fundamentalists on his side, and himself
> recently published a book arguing that all social phenomena is
> ultimately explainable by biology. Some of you may have seen his
> two articles in the Atlantic this last spring.
His book is _Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge_ and the Atlantic
articles are based on / excerpted from, the book. The articles were
available on the web which is where I read them.
>
> ricardo
>
--
Joseph Noonan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution.
-Emma Goldman
