An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY SEP 30, 1987

As a Darwinian biologist, Harvard scientist Gould has waged an ongoing battle with those who oversimplify evolutionary theory. He reminds us that understanding how an organism now functions may not explain why it evolved as it did. And when the organism in question is the human being, Darwin must sometimes yield to Lamarck, Gould freely admits, since we hand down cultural traits directly to our offspring. In this collection of reviews reprinted from the New York Review of Books, the author of Ever Since Darwin takes aim at sociobiology ("cardboard Darwinism'') and the racialist theories of Arthur Jensen. He takes shots at Jeremy Rifkin, noted opponent of Darwinism and of genetic engineering. Gould argues that the scientific establishment's rejection of Barbara McClintock, forerunner of molecular genetics, had as much to do with her idiosyncrasies as with the fact that she was a woman.