Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.
Sto caricando le informazioni... Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution (edizione 2009)di David F. Prindle (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaStephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution di David F. Prindle
Nessuno Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was, until his death in 2002, America's best-known natural scientist. This book explores Gould's science and politics as a consistent whole. The author argues that all of Gould's concepts and arguments were bona fide contributions to science, but all of them also contained specifically political implications. As one example, the author cites Gould's controversial argument that if the tape of evolution could be rewound and then allowed to unspool again, nothing resembling human beings would likely evolve. The author evaluates Gould's concepts of punctuated equilibrium (developed with Niles Eldredge), "spandrels", and "exaptation"; his stance on sociobiology, on human inequality and intelligence testing; his pivotal role in the culture wars between science and fundamentalist Christianity; and claims that he was a closet Marxist, which the author disputes. He continually emphasizes that in all these debates Gould's science cannot be understood without an understanding of his politics. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)576.8092Natural sciences and mathematics Life Sciences, Biology Genetics and evolution Evolution Biography And History BiographyClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
Sei tu?Diventa un autore di LibraryThing. |
At the end of the book, I am not entirely certain whether the author believes the second proposition or not, which perhaps explains why he got the two apparently contradictory reviews on his book that he discusses. Since I am not sure what he means to say, it is a little hard to decide how well he said it, making this a difficult book to assign stars to. Actually, if I'm not sure what he's saying, I guess I can say that he didn't say it well. His discussion of how most scientists argued that science and politics should not and do not intertwine seems to suggest that he did agree with Gould on both points. But he himself provides examples of how scientists who disagreed vehemently with Gould's scientific ideas often had similar political views. So, if he intended to argue that politics generally affects individual scientific beliefs, he didn't make a good case.
So I would read this as a comment on Gould's thinking, which is after all its main purpose, but it is ambiguous, and perhaps ambivalent, about whether he was, in that regard, a typical scientist or an exception. ( )