Stephen Jay Gould

Il testo si interroga sulla nozione e sullo statuto del discorso letterario soprattutto in relazione alle nuove scritture che emergono sulla Rete. Più in generale il saggetto propone una visione allargata del campo letterario fino al punto di suggerire che si pratica più letteratura di quando si pratichi la non letteratura.

On lit parfois et l’on entend dire souvent que Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), avec son ouvrage L’éventail du vivant, le mythe du progrès (1996), aurait « démontré » que l’évolution n’est pas dirigée par une tendance vers le « progrès » ou qu’il aurait « prouvé » qu’il n’existe pas de tendance à la complexification des êtres vivants au cours de l’évolution.
La lecture de ses livres et articles fait comprendre que rien n’est plus faux : Gould n’a rien « démontré » ni « prouvé » en la matière ; comme à son habitude, il n’a fait que marteler (drill en anglais), en les enrobant dans beaucoup de verbiage sans rapport avec le problème, les quelques idées qui lui tiennent lieu de pensée sur le sujet.
Cela, nous allons véritablement le démontrer et positivement le prouver.

«La neotenia è il veicolo di ogni rivoluzione»: terminava così un articolo di Enzo Melandri, pubblicato nel 1968, dedicato alla teoria dell'ominazione e della fetalizzazione enunciata fin dalla metà degli anni venti dall'anatomista olandese Lodewijk Bolk, e in seguito archi-viata sotto l'etichetta d'ipotesi neotenica della natura umana. Secondo Melandri, le conseguenze antropologiche, filosofiche e politiche della concezione bolkiana della natura umana-concezione, per ragioni op-poste, in egual misura ignorata o emarginata da umanisti e scienziati-sono in realtà talmente profonde da produrre una vera e propria rivo-luzione nella nostra immagine dell'uomo, e talmente ampie da indurre un'inevitabile rifondazione del paradigma antropobiologico sotteso alle più disparate discipline: la learning theory e la psicologia evolu-zionistica, la psicoanalisi e la sociologia, l'antropologia culturale e la filosofia della cultura e della storia. Infine, esse dovrebbero essere prese sul serio anche «dall'uomo della strada», il quale dovrebbe «porsi la domanda definitiva: in che modo queste conoscenze e questi schiarimenti possono servire a una presa di coscienza più adeguata della condizione umana, in vista della prassi (più che della teoria)»? Allo stato attuale delle conoscenze, prosegue Melandri, la dottrina neotenica dell'uomo-dottrina che afferma che l'uomo è un primate caratterizzato dal mantenimento in età adulta di caratteristiche anato-miche e comportamentali giovanili (dal greco neo = giovane, e teinein = tendere), tipiche degli stadi fetali e infantili delle scimmie antropo-morfe-rimane un'ipotesi in attesa di un'«autorevole recensione criti-ca» e di una rinnovata verifica empirica. È probabile che, dopo quarant'anni, molti dei dati [della teoria di Bolk] non reggano più la teoria e si spieghino diversamente: ma è altresì probabile che siano trovati molti altri dati a suo favore. In ogni modo ci troviamo di

"In 1974 Stephen Jay Gould began to write a column on the monthly review of the American Museum of Natural History: “This View of Life”. In more than 25 years of continuous activity, he published more than 300 brief essays, narrating evolution with particular attention to nature's quirkies and to the ways in which we explain them, and to nature's "jokes" defying our models; the essays also recount the history and historiography of biology, people and events contributing to the birth, revision and extension of the great evolutionary research programme. Many people (expert and not) see Gould's Reflections on Natural History as masterpieces of science writing, often realizing bold matches between science and various other forms of culture Gould drew from his own varied interests and intellectual depth. Italian readers access such richness in 12 books translated in Italian. I present and celebrate the five best brief essays by Stephen Jay Gould, who died ten years ago at 60. The "top five" is assembled through a poll among the readers of the webportal Pikaia (www.pikaia.eu). The site, active since 2004, is in debt towards Gould, beginning with choice of its name (Pikaia is the protochordate protagonist of Wonderful Life) and ending with the pluralistic and naturalistic attitude to science communication, leaned towards rigor and involvement. Gould's vivid and intriguing ideas and his unique style are sided with an overall vision of his work.

Gould and his column
Everyone's questions, everybody's questions
Collegiality and multicontextuality of science
Reflections on human nature
And the winners are
The Liberty Bell
Egg of the kiwi
Tits and clits
Being a platypus
Predarwinian prejudices
Darwinian prejudices
Fourth ex aequo: tribute of a biologist to neoteny
The Piltdown hoax
The veil of science
The veil of fraud, Teilhard's figure, and Gould's style

References
Con l’occasione ricordo che su Pikaia è disponibile l'utile bibliografia completa delle opere di S.J. Gould tradotte in italiano, redatta da Paolo Coccia e Marco Ferraguti: http://www.pikaia.eu/EasyNe2/Notizie/Bibliografia_delle_opere_di_SJ_Gould_tradotte_in_italiano_Versione_riveduta_e_corretta_il_10_maggio_2008.aspx

Riflessioni di storia naturale
Gould SJ (1977), trad. it. Questa idea della vita, Editori Riuniti, 1984.
Gould SJ (1981), trad. it. Il pollice del panda, Editori Riuniti, 1983; poi Il Saggiatore.
Gould SJ (1983), trad. it. Quando i cavalli avevano le dita, Feltrinelli, 1984.
Gould SJ (1985), trad. it. Il sorriso del fenicottero, Feltrinelli, 1985.
Gould SJ (1987), trad. it. Un riccio nella tempesta, Feltrinelli, 1991.
Gould SJ (1991a), trad. it. Bravo Brontosauro, Feltrinelli, 1992.
Gould SJ (1991b), trad. it. Risplendi grande lucciola, Feltrinelli, 1994.
Gould SJ (1993), trad. it. Otto piccoli porcellini, Bompiani 1994, poi Il Saggiatore.
Gould SJ (1996), trad. it. Gli alberi non crescono fino al cielo, Mondadori, 1997.
Gould SJ (1997), trad. it. Come un dinosauro nel pagliaio, diritti acquistati da Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, inedito.
Gould SJ (1998), I fossili di Leonardo e il pony di Sofia, Il Saggiatore, 2004.
Gould SJ (2000), Le pietre false di Marrakech, Il Saggiatore, 2007.
Gould SJ (2002), I Have Landed, Codice Edizioni, 2009.

Saggi citati (acronimi)
CMGC91: “Capezzoli maschili e glande clitorideo”, in Gould SJ (1991), trad. it. Bravo Brontosauro, Milano, Feltrinelli Universale Economica, 2002, pp. 125-139.
KIWI91: “Le uova del kiwi e la campana della libertà”, in Gould SJ (1991), trad. it. Bravo Brontosauro, Milano, Feltrinelli Universale Economica, 2002, pp. 109-123.
ORN91: “Essere un ornitorinco”, in Gould SJ (1991), trad. it. Risplendi grande lucciola, Milano, Feltrinelli “Saggi”, 1994, pp. 31-41.
PILT79: “Una nuova versione del caso Piltdown”, in Gould SJ (1981), trad. it. Il pollice del panda, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2001, pp. 99-114.
PILT80: “La cospirazione di Piltdown”, in Gould SJ (1983), trad. it. Quando i cavalli avevano le dita, Milano, Feltrinelli Universale Economica 1989, pp. 203-228.
PILT83: “Risposta ai critici”, in Gould SJ (1983), trad. it. Quando i cavalli avevano le dita, Milano, Felrtinelli Universale Economica 1989, pp. 229-242.
TOP81: “Omaggio di un biologo a Topolino”, in Gould SJ (1981), trad. it. Il pollice del panda, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2001, pp. 89-98.

Crediti per le immagini
Figura 1: http://best-places.net
Figura 2: liberamente ridisegnata da KIWI91, p. 120.
Figura 3: ML Gustafson, PK Donahoe (1994) Male sex determination: Current Concepts of Male Sexual Differentiation, Annual Review of Medicine 45:505-524
Figura 4: la foto del mosaico è “Platypus” di “toadranchlady”, http://www.flickr.com/photos/toadranchlady/2524577355/lightbox/ - il diagramma ad albero è un fotogramma del video “Genome analysis of the duck-billed platypus” (2008) realizzato da Nature, http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/platypusgenome/
Figura 5: © Walt Disney Productions, riprodotto da TOP81, pp. 92-93.
Figura 6: ristampa dell’ottobre 1956 sul Reader’s Digest di un articolo di Popular Science dell’aprile dello stesso anno. Ripresa sito creazionista http://www.purifiedbyfaith.com

Altri riferimenti
Calder III WA (1979), The kiwi and egg design: evolution as package deal, Bioscience 29(8):461-467.
Gould SJ (1981), The Mismeasure of Man, W.W. Norton, New York. Trad. it. Intelligenza e pregiudizio. Le pretese scientifiche del razzismo, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1985.
Gould SJ, Vrba ES (1982), Exaptation – A missing term in the science of form, Paleobiology 8(1):4-15. Trad. it. in Gould SJ, Vrba ES, Exaptation. Il bricolage dell'evoluzione, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2008.
Gould SJ, Lewontin RC (1979), The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B, 205, 581-598. Trad. it. di M. Ferraguti, I pennacchi di San Marco e il paradigma di Pangloss: critica al programma adattazionista. Piccola biblioteca on line, Einaudi, Torino, 2001. http://www.einaudi.it/einaudi/ita/pdf/gould-lewontin.pdf
Nagel T (1974), What is it like to be a bat?, Philosophical Review 63:435-450. Trad. it. Com’è essere un pipistrello? in De Palma A, Pareti G (a cura di), Mente e corpo. Dai Dilemmi della filosofia alle ipotesi della neuroscienza, 2004, pp. 164-180.
Sales J (2005), The endangered kiwi: a review, Folia Zool. 54(1-2):1-20.
Serrelli E (2008), Conoscere cosa, conoscere come, come conosciamo... un kiwi: un laboratorio epistemologico. In Meloni E, Beretta V (a cura di), Saperi e sapori. Idee e pratiche per umanizzare le organizzazioni, Monti, Saronno (VA), pp. 201-226."

For many astronomers, the progressive development of life has been seen as a natural occurrence given proper environmental conditions on a planet: even though such beings would not be identical to humans, there would be significant parallels. A striking contrast is seen in writings of nonphysical scientists, who have held more widely differing views. But within this diversity, reasons for differences become more apparent when we see how views about extraterrestrials can be related to the differential emphasis placed on modern evolutionary theory by scientists of various disciplines. One clue to understanding the differences between the biologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists who speculated on extraterrestrials is suggested by noting who wrote on the subject. Given the relatively small number of commentators on the topic, it seems more than coincidental that four of the major contributors to the evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s are among them. Upon closer examination it is evident that the exobiological arguments of Theodosius Dobzhansky and George Gaylord Simpson and, less directly, of H. J. Muller and Ernst Mayr are all related to their earlier work in formulating synthetic evolution. By examining the variety of views held by nonphysical scientists, we can see that there were significant disagreements between them about evolution into the 1960s. By the mid-1980s, many believed that “higher” life, particularly intelligent life, probably occurs quite infrequently in the universe; nevertheless, some held out the possibility that convergence of intelligence could occur across worlds. Regardless of the final conclusions these scientists reached about the likely prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the use of evolutionary arguments to support their positions became increasingly common.

In the early 20th century, Simone Weil called for a reconciliation of religion and science, suggesting that such a reconciliation would “bring back again among us the spirit of truth.” In this paper I investigate her vision of such a reconciliation, arguing that it requires very different suppositions than those usually assumed in discussions concerning the relationship of theology and science.

A panel discussion in Bangla on the issues of chemical or bio-war and traditional war that entail grand depopulation project. The panellists are discussing the pros and cons of the death industry as introduced by the big pharma companies and arms and ammunition sellers. A debate was initiated by the panellists on the utility and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. One Psychoanalyst also discussed the mental disorders during the lockdown years, following DSM-5, though that model was challenged by another panellist.

Most educated Christians modify belief in relation to advances and discoveries in science.  Given discoveries about the brutality of nature, which Darwin discusses in his letters with Asa Grey, it was difficult to believe that God was omnipresent.  In this paper about “God’s Grandeur,” I argue that Hopkins was aware of arguments about the brutality of nature, which forced him to reconsider the degree to which God was present in nature.  Hopkins continues to believe, but he now holds that God only appears in momentary flashes.  Other than those moments, God is not seen or experienced.

De Darwin à Gould, ce n’est pas seulement la théorie de l’évolution qui connaît des changements de structure, mais la conception du vivant elle-même qui évolue. Dans les ajustements de la théorie proposés par Gould, il y a une véritable transformation, non seulement de la « charpente », mais des postulats de la théorie, qui n’ont plus le même sens, ou plus la même place (pour ne donner qu’un exemple : c’est le cas du gradualisme, postulat fondamental chez Darwin). Ces changements épistémologiques ont une portée philosophique et plus précisément métaphysique, forte. En effet, ils supposent une sortie du mécanisme causal linéaire de l’environnement sur le vivant, et ainsi l’introduction d’un potentiel proprement créateur de la vie (qu’on trouve notamment chez Gould, dans la notion de « réserve exaptative »).

Se trata de un artículo sobre la distorsión retrospectiva o "hindsight bias". Comento un paralelismo observable entre algunas teorías de la evolución biológica por una parte y de la hermenéutica textual por otra. El análisis se centra sobre dos obras: "Wonderful Life", de Stephen Jay Gould, y "Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History", de Michael André Bernstein. En ambas se observa una alta consciencia de la naturaleza inevitablemente narrativa de la historia, así como una llamada de aviso ante la interpretación direccional de la historia, en la que ven una ilusión perspectivística que resulta de esta narratividad.

The movie Contact, inspired by Carl Sagan's novel, is (surprisingly?) a move that argues that science and religion are compatible. The main character, Dr. Arroway, "justifiably" believes that she has contacted aliens for the same reason that Rev. Joss thinks he has contacted God: a personal experience. But is it ever scientific to let personal experience override what one knows is the better explanation? This chapter explores the movie Contact to explain why the answer to this question is "no"; and more generally how and why religion and science can and do conflict. While a person can be fully scientifically and religiously minded if they treat religious belief as non-literal, and only about ethics and meaning, the majority of religious beliefs, central to many religions--such as belief in the soul, the resurrection, miracles and even God--are fundamentally unscientific.

(This is the MS word version of the chapter, submitted to the editor, for typesetting and proofing.)

Este artículo reexamina la crítica de Stephen Jay Gould al concepto de consiliencia propuesto por E. O. Wilson, remontándose a la formulación original del concepto por parte de William Whewell. Aquí clarificamos el componente de retrospección hermenéutica inherente al proceso efectual de la consiliencia, una cuestión que puede enfocarse desde la perspectiva de una narratología cognitiva.

English Abstract: This paper reexamines Stephen Jay Gould's critique of E. O. Wilson's notion of consilience, going back to William Whewell's original formulation of the concept. The element of hermeneutic hindsight which inheres in the process of consilience is clarified and brought to the fore as a notion pertaining to the field of cognitive narratology.

Notes: Downloadable document is in Spanish.

Originally given as a lecture at UNK in Fall 2012, this lecture discusses Stephen J Gould's idea science and religion as non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA).  This idea is not entirely correct since all teaching finds it original source in the Summa Veritas; this Summa Veritas is also the source of the being of all things, so any truth about these things that is discovered by a mind is doubly bound to this source.  The double bond is this: First, the truth about the thing comes to the thing, or is in the thing actually because the thing has come to be from the Summa Veritas.  Secondly, the mind which knows the truth about the thing both is and operates truly because of a similar receptiveness from the Summa Veritas.  Under this consideration the sense of "literal truth" of the Bible has a richer sense than usually thought.

According to the Modern Synthesis (MS), population genetics, as the science of the dynamics of changing allele frequencies in a population, is the core of evolutionary biology since it explains the arising of adaptations by cumulative selection. Its scale is microevolution, namely, evolution of the population of one species within a timescale not too large, defined by a small window of variations and environmental changes. Microevolution constrats with macroevolution, that is, evolution above the level of speciation, such as the extinction or emergence of species and clades, which involves a longer timescale and therefore may assume large environmental changes. MS claimed that macroevolution is not different from macroevolution. This " extrapolationist " thesis formulated by Simpson has been challenged for three decades: by the " punctuated equilibrium " thesis, and recently by Evo-Devo. Here I question the reasons why the extrapolationist thesis is threatened by advances in paleobiology and evolutionary developmental theory. The paper essentially distinguishes between biological and mathematical reasons why there could be principled differences between micro-evolution and macroevolution. The former concern the nature of variation, which fuels natural selection: whether it's only made up by mutations and sexual recombination, or whether other developmental features should account for phenotypic variation; it ultimately relies on topological features of the genotype-phenotype maps. Mathematical reasons concern the modeling of chance events in microevolution: at larger timescales, models of chance (such as Gaussian distribution of fluctuations) may not be any more justified, and other models would be required, though at microevolutionary timescales all models would be in practice equivalent. This argument will be applied to recent evolutionary research on extinction time. It appeals to the distinction made by mathematician Mandelbrot between " wild randomness " and " mild randomness " as two distinct structures of randomness. I conclude by showing that the mathematical differences between micro and macroevolution are more general, and therefore may challenge the extrapolation thesis even if empirical facts do not support the biological differences.

In this paper I discuss the role played by the concept of “contingency” both in the aesthetic theory (with particular reference to Immanuel Kant's aesthetics, as described and developed in his Critique of the power of judgement) and in evolutionary theory (with particular reference to Stephen Jay Gould's work, paleontologist and evolutionist). The main claim in this paper is that human aesthetic attitude is contingent both from the viewpoint of its evolutionary genesis (it is the result of contingent events and transformations in the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens) and from the viewpoint of its functioning (the aesthetic experience happens, as Kant claims in the Introduction of his Critique of the Power of Judgement, in the form of a “happy chance”, ein glücklicher Zufall, a satisfying contingency). My paper attempts to make Aesthetics and Evolutionary theory interact, taking into account in particular the contemporary developments of Evolutionary theory (such as Gould's important concepts of “exaptation” and “spandrel”), which in the course of the last two decades have radically transformed the physiognomy of Darwin's evolutionary theory by means of natural selection.

The paper analyzes Gould's scientific and historiographical enterprise during the twenty-five years between Ontogeny and Philogeny and The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, with particular focus on the way Gould reshaped  the major formalist issues involved in the anti-Darwinian orthogenetic theories of evolution.

This article argues that Ernst Cassirer’s views about the concept of substance and his views on mythic consciousness are applicable to the concept of race. By analyzing examples from the most influential and representative racial theories, this article shows that the concept of race functions like the concept of substance whereby random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena is explained through the deterministic behavior of a smaller, material, constituent part. Given that mythic consciousness explains causality in the same way, this substance-mode explanation of becoming can also be termed “mythic.” Further, under this substance/racial understanding of personhood, humans have no agency to determine their own fates. It is this fatalism that Cassirer railed against in The Myth of the State. In place of this substance (racial) understanding of personhood, and as this article will describe, Cassirer argued for a “functional” (cultural) understanding of personhood.

Très souvent, on compte sur la science pour nous sauver. Le rapport qu'on établit avec elle peut donner à penser que la science parlerait ainsi de choses, validerait quelque chose comme des évidences immédiates. La connaissance scientifique est inférentielle. Si elle a un objet, ce qu'en rigueur de termes la philosophie n'a pas, elle doit néanmoins se mettre à distance de lui pour se faire science. Elle valide ainsi des schèmes abstraits, qui ne sont scientifiques que dans cette mesure. Nous prendrons la mesure du fait que pour nous aider à retrouver le concret, l'intuition est meilleure guide que la science, et puis nous convoquerons certaines idées de l'algébriste et métaphysicien Alfred North Whitehead dont l'actualité ne cesse d'étonner, lorsqu'il inverse l'accès direct au réel, à l'envers de la vulgate reçue concernant les rapports entre science et religion.

Gould and Lewontin's classical but controversial paper translated into Russian.

Гулд С.Дж., Левонтин Р.Ч. Пазухи свода собора Святого Марка и парадигма Панглосса: критика адаптационистской программы [перевод И.А. Кузина] // Философия. Наука. Гуманитарное знание. – М. : Центр стратегической конъюнктуры, 2014. – С. 160-191.

This article examines some of the implications of technological optimism. I first contextualize, historically and culturally (Christopher Nolan's Interstellar [2014] is considered as a particularly salient example), some contemporary variants of techno-optimism in relation to the equally significant contemporary exemplars of techno-pessimism, skepticism and fatalism. I show that this techno-optimism is often instrumentalized in the sense that the optimistic outlook as such is believed to have some influence on the evolving state of affairs. The cogency of this assumption is scrutinized. I argue that in the absence of explicit probabilities, such optimism presupposes some form of retro-causation, where the future is held to somehow have a retroactive effect on the past. This suggests that the underlying mechanism by which techno-optimism is supposed to be instrumental in bringing about the future is fundamentally superstitious. Such superstition, of course, goes against our common understanding of reason and rationality, for adopting rational expectations about the world requires that we avoid the emotional over-determination of our assessments. I show that applied reason is conceptually entangled with this superstitious optimism in the continued successes of technology. The article thus reveals a curious sense in which reason is intrinsically superstitious. I offer an evolutionary explanation for this, showing that the biological origins of reason will by nature tend to produce rational agents which are superstitiously bound to realism and causality, and thus implicitly optimistic about technology's capacity to overcome contingency.

The paper deals with some cognitive implications of hindsight bias. It examines some analogies between contemporary views on the evolution of life on one hand and present-day textual hermeneutics on the other. For the purpose of my analysis, these disciplines will be represented by two works: "Wonderful Life", by Stephen Jay Gould, and "Foregone Conclusions", by Michael André Bernstein. Both evince an intense awareness of the inescapably narrative nature of historical studies, and both warn against teleological interpretations of history. Such directionality is denounced as the product of hindsight, a perspectival illusion resulting from the narrative nature of history.

_____________________________________________________

Se trata de una reflexión sobre el fenómeno cognitivo de la distorsión retrospectiva o "hindsight bias". Comento en este artículo un paralelismo observable entre algunas teorías recientes de la evolución biológica por una parte y de la hermenéutica textual por otra. El análisis se centra sobre dos obras: "Wonderful Life", de Stephen Jay Gould, y "Foregone Conclusions", de Michael André Bernstein. En ambas se observa una alta consciencia de la naturaleza inevitablemente narrativa de la historia, así como una llamada de aviso ante la interpretación direccional de la historia, en la que ven una ilusión perspectivística que resulta de esta narratividad.

"Badiou, the Event, and Psychiatry"

by Vincenzo Di Nicola

Part I: Trauma and Event

Part II: Psychiatry of the Event

This online blog of the American Philosophical Association is an overview of my work with French philosopher Alain Badiou for my doctoral dissertation ("Trauma and Event: A Philosophical Archaeology," Di Nicola, 2012) and my subsequent elaboration of his theory of the event to announce an "Evental psychiatry."

The traditional view holds that love and knowledge are only possible if a person can transcend the human—love is that which overcomes biological urges like lust, while knowledge is that which gets beyond self-interested perception.  In the nineteenth century, when theories about anthropomorphism came to dominate, the traditional views of love and knowledge were exposed as incoherent.  In "Morpho Eugenia," A.S. Byatt brilliantly dramatizes how these intellectual developments impacted the lives of a wide range of nineteenth-century characters—some sunk into nihilistic despair, some became dogmatic scientists, some became tortured existentialists, and some tried to build a new and more reasonable conception of love and knowledge.  In my essay, I examine the necessary consequences the nineteenth-century’s anthropomorphic turn had on theories about knowledge and love.  Put simply, Byatt suggests that the major shift in our theory of knowledge, while devastating for many, actually set the stage for political empowerment for many others.

Few of Stephen Jay Gould's accomplishments in evolutionary biology have received more attention than his hierarchical theory of evolution, which postulates a causal discontinuity between micro-and macroevolutionary events. But Gould's hierarchical theory was his second attempt to supply a theoretical framework for macroevolutionary studies-and one he did not inaugurate until the mid-1970s. In this paper, I examine Gould's first attempt: a proposed fusion of theoretical morphology, multivariate biometry and the experimental study of adaptation in fossils. This early ''macroevolutionary synthesis'' was predicated on the notion that parallelism and convergence dominate the history of higher taxa, and moreover, that they can be explained in terms of adaptation leading to mechanical improvement. In this paper, I explore the origins and contents of Gould's first macroevo-lutionary synthesis, as well as the reasons for its downfall. In addition, I consider how various developments during the mid-1970s led Gould to identify hierarchy and constraint as the leading themes of macroevolutionary studies-and adaptation as a macroevolutionary red herring.

Critical review of Stephen Jay Gould's work in natural sciences, stressing the methodological importance of his theory on "punctuated equilibria". Against the gradualistic view, Gouldian darwinism tends to see the evolutionary change and the natural selection mechanism itself as the result of "great leaps" in the rythms of history, the sudden appearance of new species being followed by large periods of stasis. Methodological and substantive bridge-building with most of the human sciences, specially history, is also highly valued in Gould's work.
159. “Um Darwinista Heterodoxo: Stephen Jay Gould e a Sobrevivência dos (Cientistas) mais Aptos”, Genebra, 19 abril 1988, 25 pp. Ensaio sobre a obra do naturalista norte-americano, com destaque para a teoria dos “equilíbrios pontuados” e suas conexões com o processo histórico. Revisto em 12 junho 1988, com base em comentários e observações de consultores encaminhados pelo Comitê Editorial da revista mensal da SBPC. Publicado em Ciência e Cultura (São Paulo: vol. 40, nº 12, dezembro de 1988, pp. 1154-1163). Relação de Publicados nº 052.

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179-191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings.

Neo-Darwinism, through the combination of natural selection and genetics, has made possible an explanation of adaptive phenomena that claims to be devoid of metaphysical presuppositions. What Bergson already deplored and what we explore in this paper is the implicit finalism of such evolutionary explanations, which turn living beings into closed and static systems rather than understanding biological evolution as a process characterized by its interactions and temporal openness. Without denying the heuristic efficiency of the explanation resting upon natural selection, we analyze what it leaves out and what remains to be explored: the unpredictability of the evolutionary process. We will therefore study the role of contingency in evolution, as Stephen J. Gould proposed, but we will also consider the causality specific to the living world that makes it impossible to reduce it to a simple algorithm, as proposed by Daniel Dennett among others, but that it is really a creative causation, or creative spiral.

Là où Bergson critiquait l’idée de désordre pour comprendre le « finalisme vrai » de la vie, c'est-à-dire le sens, la cohérence du mouvement de l’élan vital vers toujours plus de progrès, nous proposons au contraire de repenser le désordre pour sortir de l’aporie du finalisme bergsonien et mettre en lumière le vrai mouvement de l’évolution du vivant, mouvement sans direction cohérente interne, mais qui n’est toutefois pas chaotique. Nous espérons par là pouvoir faire se rencontrer la philosophie de Bergson et les sciences contemporaines, sans ignorer toutefois les limites et les nuances qu’il faudra apporter à cette rencontre.

Does Size Matter?
The Measurement of the Jewish Skull in Hungary (1875–1944)

It is debated among historians to what extent scientific racism influenced early Hungarian physical anthropology. According to one opinion the fin-de-siècle anthropologists of Hungary were inclined to think in terms of racial superiority and inferiority. According to another view they refrained from the biologization of ethnic differences and from creating racial hierarchies. The history of the pre-holocaust investigation of the Jewish skull capacity in Hungary does not fit perfectly into any of the aforementioned narratives. The craniologists measured the size of the Jews’ head, but they never concluded from the results of their researches to the intellectual capability of the Jewry. However, the reason for it was not that they denied the existence of the difference between the intellectual endowment of various races, but that they did not believe in the principle of “size does matter”, that is to say they did not think that a larger brain is associated with higher level of intelligence.


A történészek vitatják, hogy a tudományos rasszizmus milyen mértékben be-folyásolta a korai magyar fi zikai antropológiát. Az egyik vélemény szerint a századforduló magyarországi antropológusai hajlamosak voltak arra, hogy faji alsóbb-és felsőbbrendű-ségben gondolkodjanak. A másik felfogás szerint az antropológusok tartózkodtak az etni-kai különbségek biologizálásától és a faji hierarchiák felállításától. A zsidó koponyatérfogat kutatásának magyarországi története nem illik tökéletesen egyik említett elbeszélésbe sem. A kraniológusok megmérték a zsidók fejének méretét, de sohasem következtettek kutatásaik eredményeiből a zsidóság értelmi képességeire. Ennek az oka azonban nem az volt, hogy tagadták a fajok szellemi rátermettsége közti egyenlőtlenségeket, hanem az, hogy nem hittek "a méret a lényeg"-elvben, vagyis nem gondolták, hogy a nagyobb agy magasabb intelligen-ciaszinttel jár együtt. Kulcsszavak: kraniológia, zsidóság, koponyaméret, intelligencia, faj, Magyarország replika 2019 (113): 115-141. © A szerző(k) 2019 replika.hu/replika/113