Unofficial SJG Archive

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Added October 29, 2011:

Stephen Jay Gould Papers Project Update: "The Manuscripts Division is pleased to announce the completion of the physical processing of the Stephen Jay Gould papers. The first and largest accession of Gould's papers arrived at Stanford University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections in 2004, with 8 smaller accessions following through early 2011. The first phase of the processing project, which began in Fall of 2009, included a detailed processing of Gould's correspondence, manuscripts, and juvenilia. Upon completion of these three series, the processing team switched gears to complete basic arrangement and description of the remainder of Gould's papers. The Gould papers consist of 564.5 linear feet of material, which includes over 850 boxes of textual material, approximately 450 audiovisual items, and 1,180 computer media files (52 megabytes). A comprehensive finding aid is forthcoming, and will be published online in Fall 2011." [Continue...]

Added January 27, 2011:

Added Stephen Jay Gould's "The Interrelationship Between Speciation and Punctuated Equilibrium" and Niles Eldredge's "Progress in evolution?."

Added September 26, 2010:

Added a number of excellent essays by Stephen Jay Gould's, including: "Punctuated Equilibrium—A Different Way of Seeing" (1982), "The Panda's Thumb and the Orchid's Trap" (1978), "Were dinosaurs dumb?" (1978), "When the unorthodox prevails" (1978), "Flaws in the Victorian veil" (1978), "Species are not specious" (1979), "A Natural Precision Designer" (1979), "The Inexorable Tick of Time" (1979), "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds" (1979), "The Upright Ape" (1979), "Darwin's Deceptive Memories" (1980), "The Throwaway Male" (1980), "One Standard Lifespan" (1979), "A Nation of Morons" (1982), "Back to the Begining" (1980), "What's Wrong with Marsupials?" (1980), "The Chance that Shapes Our Ends" (1981), "Of Turtle, Vets, Elephants and Castles" (1979), "Smith Woodward's Folly" (1979), "Women's Brains" (1979), "Dr. Down's Syndrome" (1981), "Another look at Lamarck" (1979); "Do We Really Need the Census?" (1981), all published in New Scientist and made available through Google.Books.

Added September 22, 2010:

Added an interview with Stephen Jay Gould by the Academy of Achievement.

Added Stephen Jay Gould's "Is uniformitarianism necessary?" (1965), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" (1980), "Darwinism and the expansion of evolutionary theory" (1982), "The Hottentot Venus" (1982), "Women’s brains" (1978), and "The paradox of the first tier: an agenda for paleobiology" (1985), to the bibliography.

Added June 19, 2009:

A link to Gould's speech "Evolution and the 21st Century," at the at the American Institute of Biological Sciences, March 2000.

Updated Michelle Green's article, and included a few photos including one with Gould and Pope John Paul II.

Added May 28, 2009:

Links to "Dinosaur Deconstruction" (1993), "What Is a Species?" (1992), "Creating the Creators" (1996), and "Eve and Her Tree" (1992) by Stephen Jay Gould; "Whose View of Life?" by Roger Lewin (1992); "Both Sides Now," by Michael Ruse (2000); and "The Royal Road of Science," by Bryan Appleyard (1998).

Added May 27, 2009:

The entire Cosmos series, featuring Carl Sagan, is now publicly available by Hulu.

Gould fans might also like to know that several new books are out dealing with Gould's life and work, including Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution by David F. Prindle (2009) [Review]; and Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life edited by Patricia Kelley, Robert Ross, and Warren D. Allmon (2008). David Sepkoski and Michael Ruse have also edited a book titled The Paleobiological Revolution (2009), which deals with aspects of Gould's work, including punctuated equilibrium. You can read part of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life, including Warren D. Allmon's essay "The Structure of Gould," Dana Geary's "The Legacy of Punctated Equilibrium," David C. Kendrick's "Top Tier," Philip Kitcher's "Evolutionary Theory and the Social Uses of Biology" R.D.K. Thomas' "Gould's Odyssey," and Bruce Lieberman's "Stephen Jay Gould's Evolving Hierarchical Thoughts on Stasis," through Google Books.

Sources have also revealed that the biography of Gould under preparation by Frederic Golden (and NAS) will be severely delayed, possibly indefinitely.

Added January 14, 2009:

Added links to Steve Jones "A wonderful life by leaps and bounds," a review of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life, as well as Laurence Moran's response "An Adaptationist View of Stephen Jay Gould." Also put up a link to S. J. Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium, made available by Google Books.

Added December 5, 2007:

"The Cosmic Lottery," a review of Woderful Life, by Elizabeth Mehren

Added September 30, 2007:

I'm happy to mention that our website was featured by American Scientist as their "Site of the Week"!

Added May 16, 2007:

"Replicators and Vehicles," by Richard Dawkins (1982).

Added May 15, 2007:

"Horotely, Bradytely, and Tachytely" by George Gaylord Simpson (1953).

Added April 22, 2007:

Posted a link to Gould's "Eternal metaphors of paleontology," originally published in A. Hallam, Patterns of Evolution as Illustrated by the Fossil Record, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1977, pp. 1-26.

Added April 11, 2007:

It was nice to see our website featured in Science magazine's "Netwatch," edited by Mitch Leslie, on October 27, 2006. [Science 314 (5799): 571.] A PDF of the article can be downloaded here.

Added December 7, 2006:

Added Stephen Jay Gould's "The Phenomenon of Medawar," originally published in Peter Medawar's The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science, 1996, pp. v-xi.

Added November 21, 2006:

Just added links to Gould's "Creating the creators," "Darwinism defined: the difference between fact and theory," "We first stood on our own two feet in Africa, not Asia," "The lesson of the dinosaurs: evolution didn't inevitably lead to us," "Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear," "Entropic homogeneity isn't why no one hits .400 any more," "The geometer of race," and also Ellen Shell's "Waves of creation," a profile of Elisabeth Vrba and her "turn-over pulse hypothesis." All published by Discover magazine.

Added October 17, 2006:

I just found a very nice website called "The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science." It's rich with excellent content and multimedia. Don't miss it. And also check out Dawkins appearance on the Colbert Rebort, from YouTube.com.

Added October 16, 2006:

Added a link to Stephen Jay Gould's 1971 "Muscular mechanics and the ontogeny of swimming in scallops."

And links to two websites on history of the modern evolutionary synthesis; George Wang's "Readings from The Modern Synthesis" and Michael Dietrich and Jay Aronson's "Documents on Molecular Evolution," which also contains Richard C. Lewontin's The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1974.

Added September 11, 2006:

Thanks to some generous individuals, we just added six outstanding reviews to Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory, including Francisco J. Ayala's critical "On Stephen Jay Gould’s Monumental Masterpiece," Douglas Erwin's "One Very Long Argument," Todd A. Grantham's "Constraints and Spandrels in Gould’s Structure of Evolutionary Theory," Daniel W. McShea's "A Revised Darwinism," William A. DiMichele "A Season with Steve Gould," and Howard A. Doughty's review for the College Quarterly

Added August 13, 2006:

I just found an interesting thesis paper titled The Adventures of Punctuated Equilibria: A Struggle for Authority in the Evolutionary Sciences (1 MB) by Andrew James Grimshaw. It is a fairly comprehensive history of the punctuated equilibrium debate, supplemented with several comments by scientists who responded to the author's questionnaire. When I fist started reading the paper it looked extremely promising, but as I read on it became apparent to me that Mr. Grimshaw is a social constructionist, and a student of Bruno Latour. Ouch. Too bad. But despite these only slight deficiencies, there is much good history here and it is well worth a read. Here's the front matter (141 KB), as well as the appendix (261 KB), which contains the questionnaire. These files are in PDF and require the Acrobat Adobe Reader.

Added August 3, 2006:

Updated the Ernst Mayr page, and included a bibliography. Added Mayr's "The philosophical foundations of Darwinism," "Is biology truly an autonomous science?" "Cause and effect in biology," "The multiple meanings of teleological," his classic "Change of genetic environment and evolution," and a number of other papers as well. I also included a review of Mayr's Toward a New Philosophy of Biology by Jack P. Hailman, and a wonderful profile of Mayr's views of speciation by William B. Provine.

Also, Shovel Bums have spawned a line of "Gould Fish," which can be acquired here.

Added July 23, 2006:

Added a few more articles to the library, including Philip Gingerich's "Punctuated equilibria—where is the evidence?" (1984), which is a general critique of geological adequacy; David B. Wake's review of Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1978), and his "On the scientific legacy of Stephen Jay Gould," (2002); also Stephen Jay Gould, Pere Alberc, George Oster, and Davis B. Wake's "Size and shape in ontogeny and phylogeny" (1979); and finally Frank Sulloway's "The Evolution of Charles Darwin" (2005).

Lastly The Washington Post, using newly developed technology from MIT, posted an interesting "morph" of how humans might have looked as they evolved from much earlier primates. Check it out here.

Added July 13, 2006:

Significantly updated the book reviews section.

Added July 11, 2006:

Added "On punctuated equilibria" an exchange with Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Jerry Coyne, and Brian Charlesworth, Science (1997); Niles Eldredge's "The Dynamics of Evolutionary Stasis" (2004); Michael T. Ghiselin's review of Structure "An Autobiographical Anatomy" (2002); Hampton L. Carson's "review of Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is (2002); an interview with Mayr from BioEssays (2002); and Jared Diamond's obituary "Ernst Mayr (1904–2005)" in Nature (2005).

Also expanded the library to include a section on agency, which attempts to define the target of selection. A lot of good material was found for this section including Ernst Mayr's "The Objects of Selection," Richard Dawkins' "A Survival Machine," George C. Williams's "A Package of Information," David L. Hull's "Replicators and Interactors," and Peter Godfrey-Smith's "The Replicator in Retrospect."

Through Google Book Search, I added Alfred Russel Wallace's The Malay Archipelago (1869) and his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1871), St. George Mivart's On the Genesis of Species (1871), and George John Romanes' Darwin and After Darwin (1892), to the book section.

Added June 26, 2006:

Added video links to Gould's and James D. Watson and Edward O. Wilson appearance on PBS's Charlie Rose (courtesy of Google Video). Added several interviews to the multimedia and interview pages, with much material on E. O. Wilson. Significantly updated the Ernst Mayr page. Added a link to Robert Wright's MeaningOfLife.tv, which houses numerous video interviews with scientists and philosophers such as John Maynard Smith, E. O. Wilson, Danniel Dennet, Steven Pinker, Ursula Goodenough, and many others. Added a link to The People Archives (which also contains video interviews with scientists such as Ernst Mayr and John Maynard Smith); and added Stephen Jay Gould's classic essay "A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse" (1979).

Through Google Video, it is even possible to watch Carl Sagan's complete Cosmos series Online for free. See episodes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. The program has been reissued on DVD and updated with even more breathtaking imagery. This wonderful set can—and should, of course!—be part of your home video library, and can purchased through Amazon.com for $114.99.
Also available is Richard Dawkins' "The Root of All Evil" part I and II (2006); Stephen Hawking's Universe, episodes one, two, three, four, five, and six (1997); video from James Watsons' 2003 appearance on Charlie Rose; and Richard Feynman's "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out," (a 1981 interview).
The Edge.org is also celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of The Selfish Gene. A large audio file is available of the proceedings, with speakers Daniel Dennett, John Krebs, Matt Ridley, Ian McEwan, and Richard Dawkins.

Added June 10, 2006:

Added a link to David Sepkowski's "Stephen Jay Gould, Jack Sepkoski, and the ‘Quantitative Revolution’ in American Paleobiology" written for the Journal of the History of Biology. And added links to Richard Lewontin's "The Wars Over Evolution" (Oct. 2005) and John Maynard-Smith's "Taking a Chance on Evolution" (May 1992) both published for the NYRB.

Added June 1, 2006:

Two books in tribute of Stephen Jay Gould have come out, Macroevolution: Diversity, Disparity, Contingency: Essays in Honor of Stephen Jay Gould and The Richness of Life: A Stephen Jay Gould Reader, which will be released in the US June 27, 2006. A UK edition has already been released, and has been reviewed by Brenda Maddox for the Times. Also Niles Eldredge has written an interesting piece titled "Confessions of a Darwinist" for the Virginia Quarterly Review. And lastly, Seed magazine talks to the writers behind The Simpsons.

Added Janruary 10, 2006:

Added links to Roger Lewin's "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire" (1980), David Jablonski's "Mass Extinctions and Macroevolution" (2000) and "Species-Level Heritability Reaffirmed" (2005), and an excerpt from Jeffrey Levinton's Genetics Paleontology and Macroevolution (2001).

Systematics and the Origin of Species: On Ernst Mayr's 100th Anniversary. [Articles] [Multimedia]

Added December 11, 2005.

Added links to Stephen Jay Gould's "Eight (or Fewer) Little Piggies," "Dinosaurs in the Haystack," "Darwin and Paley Meet the Invisible Hand," "Tires to Sandals," "The Reversal of Hallucigenia," "Justice Scalia's Misunderstanding," and "Fall in the House of Ussher," "Cordelia's dilemma," from www.sjgarchive.org

Added October 21, 2005.

Added the full text of A. C. Seward's Darwin and Modern Science, a collection of essays printed in 1909 commemorating the centenary of Charles Darwin's birth, and 50 years of the publication of On the Origin of Species. The volume includes contributions by August Weismann, Ernst Haeckel, Adam Sedgwick, William Bateson, Hugo De Vries, Francis and George Darwin, and others.

Added January 26, 2005.

Added a link to Steven Stanley's "A Theory of Evolution Above the Species Level," and Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker; both made available in PDF format.

Added January 12, 2005.

Added a link to Carl Zimmer's "'Bigger Is Better' View of Evolution Gains Credence," which discusses new research on Cope's Rule (that size increases significantly throughout the course of animal evolution). Gould made it well known that he was skeptical of this trend—calling it a "psychological artifact." There is also an interesting piece on Avida, also by Zimmer. So be sure to check that out as well.

News: July 5, 2004.

Ernst Mayr turns 100 today: "80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery" by Ernst Mayr, Science; "A giant in biology has evolved to 100" by Keay Davidson, The San Francisco Chronicle; "The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr" by Claudio Angelo and Steve Mirsky, Scientific American; "Happy 100th Birthday Ernst Mayr!" Michael Shermer, Skeptic; "What Ernst Mayr Teaches Us" by Sallie Baliunas, Tech Central Station.

Added June 29, 2004:

"Ernst Mayr, Darwin's Disciple" an interview by Christine Bahls.

And links to Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould's classic paper "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism," and Carl Zimmer's "Stretching the Limits of Evolutionary Biology: A Profile of George Williams," published in Science (May 28, 2004), as well as Richard Milner's memoir "Farwell Fossilface."

Added May 10, 2004:

Full versions of Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle and The History of Life Source Book are now available on the official Stephen Jay Gould Archive (which currently remains under construction).

Added March 1, 2004:

"Stephen Jay Gould: Driven By a Hunger to Learn and to Write," by Michelle Green.

Added February 28, 2004:

"Kinship With the Stars," by Jared Diamond.

Added February 22, 2004:

Posted links to reviews of Richard Dawkins' new volume A Devil's Chaplain by H. Allen Orr and Michael Ruse.

Added February 16, 2004:

Added a link to David Quammen's review of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, links to Gould's essays "Kropotkin Was No Crackpot" and "Theories Need Both Essences and Histories," links to Michael Ruse's article "Being Mean to Steve," Richard Dawkins' essay on evolutionary progress "The Evolutionary Future of Man," Derrick Jackson's article "Stephen Jay Gould's Battle Against Racism," and a rememberance by Jaron Lanier.

Added January 21, 2004:

Added links to David Queller's "The Spaniels of St. Marx and the Panglossian Paradox"; Michael Ruse's review of Simon Conway-Morris's Life's Solution; and Oliver Owen's review of Gould's Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville.

Added November 2, 2003:

"A Conversation With George C. Williams" by Frans Roes.

Added September 28, 2003:

Added links to Doug Pond's "Stephen Jay Gould's Evolution," and Phil Gasper's "Stephen Jay Gould: Dialectical Biologist," to the Library.

News: August 30, 2003:

A full biography of Stephen Jay Gould is under preparation by the National Academy of Sciences (Joseph Henry Press label) under the authorship of Frederic Golden. Reports indicate that it will be titled "Fossil Face": The Life and Times of Stephen Jay Gould (2005). [This project has been seriously delayed, and the publication date is unknown. ed. 6/12/08]

Added June 8, 2003:

"Reversing Bad Truths" by David Ewing Duncan.

Added March 25, 2003:

The Speakeasy with Dorian Devins (RealAudio) 2002 to the Multimedia Page.

Added February 21, 2003:

"Making it New in Soho" by Suzanne Stephens.

News: February 20, 2003:

The latest issue of Skeptic (Vol. 9 No. 4) honors Stephen Jay Gould, with articles by Richard Milner and Michael Shermer. (Read the text of Shermer's "This View of Science" here.)

News: February 18, 2003:

It has become a common practice for Creationist groups to construct lists of several scientists who reject the theory of evolution, presumably to persuade the public that the theory is undergoing "crisis." In a response of sorts, the National Center for Science Education has given us "Project Steve," a tongue-in-cheek list of 220 scientists with the name "Steve" who hold just the opposite opinion. The name Steve was chosen "in honor of the late Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), a supporter of NCSE and a valiant opponent of creationism."

Added January 28, 2003:

"Enigmas of Evolution," a cover story for Newsweek, by Jerry Adler and John Carey.

Added January 10, 2003:

Posted a "Web FAQ" and changed the title a bit.

Added November 15, 2002:

"A Career in the Glare of Public Acclaim" by David L. Hull.

Added November 11, 2002:

"Biology in the Twenty-First Century" by Ernst Mayr.

Added October 28, 2002:

"Natural Selection as a Creative Force" by Stephen Jay Gould.

Added October 25, 2002:

Added a link to "The Return of Hopeful Monsters" by Stephen Jay Gould.

Added October 14, 2002:

Added an audio clip from Stephen Jay Gould's appearance on "The Connection."

Added October 14, 2002:

Added a profile of Sir Charles Lyell and G. G. Simpson.

Added October 6, 2002:

"Opus 200" by Stephen Jay Gould.

Added October 5, 2002:

Website featured as Yahoo!'s Pick for October 5, 2002.

Added a profile of Richard Goldschmidt.

Added October 1, 2002:

"This View of Science: Stephen Jay Gould as Historian of Science and Scientific Historian, Popular Scientist and Scientific Popularizer" by Michael Shermer.

Added a profile of J. B. S. Haldane.

Added September 30, 2002:

"Bright Star Among Billions" by Stephen Jay Gould.

Added September 29, 2002:

"The Confusion over Evolution" by Stephen Jay Gould.

Added September 15, 2002:

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers.

Added September 13, 2002:

Added a profile of Theodosius Dobzhansky.

Added September 12, 2002:

Chapter one of Genetics and the Origin of Species by Theodosius Dobzhansky.

Added September 11, 2002:

"William D. Hamilton: In His Own Words" by Frans Roes.

Added a profile of William D. Hamilton.

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