11.30.07
D’Souza rummaging through Gould
Daniel Dennett’s Darwinian Fundamentalism
Talking point for D’Souza: since Gould is so brilliant, why not bring in his punk eek as a political ‘dynamic’.
Or is D’Souza too ‘conservative’ to find the evolutionary angle in the sans-culottes? You are not a conservative, are you, Mr. D’Souza?
Meanwhile Gould’s acquaintance with the evidence wasn’t enough to dislodge him from the selectionist myth.
In preparation for my debate with Daniel Dennett on Friday evening, I went back and read the late Stephen Jay Gould’s review-essay on Dennett in the June 12, 1997 New York Review of Books. Unlike Dennett, who is a philosopher, Gould was one of the world’s leading authorities on evolution. One can feel safe in saying that he knew a lot more about the biological evidence for Darwinism than Dennett.