| Photo from: University of Michigan Windows to the Universe Perhaps more than any other contemporary American scientist Stephen Jay Gould has presented the modes, implications, benefits, and shortcomings of science to a literate public. As an inventive and productive scholar he has shaped and participated in crucial debates of the biological and geological sciences, particularly with regard to the theory of evolution, the interpretation of fossil evidence, and the meaning of diversity and change in biology. As the readership for his nearly twenty books and hundreds of essays, reviews, and articles has grown he has become one of the most popular and well-known writers and lecturers on scientific topics. He has distinguished himself by elaborating his critique of contemporary evolutionary theory via an eclectic range of discourse, deriving inspiration from his personal reflections across an astonishing array of historical and humanistic disciplines, popular culture, and sports. Gould's empirical field studies have concentrated on fossil mollusks and snails found in Bermuda. His first major monographic work, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1977), treated the theory of recapitulation in evolutionary biology. His second | |
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