THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY

I've had this book for a year and have had enormous difficulty overcoming this obfuscative hurdle of 2,000 word sentences (and their obligatory over-parenthesised synthesised jargonites) which fused poorly with the underabundance of terse phraseology (which, it should be duly noted, is frustrating and distracting), which caused me to go read Dawkins instead (a more accessable and engaging author): still if it is as you say, I shall attempt to skip the start with its strained metahphors and run on sentences and try (once more!) to delve into the knowledge (hopefully free of McFallian linguistics).

Oh, I do think I understand his intent in his metaphor of the "tripod". And I will say that in one of the earlier chapters, where he is explaining Darwin's arguments for his theory, and putting it into the context of the science and natural theology of his time (especially in regards to Paley and to Lamarck), I think the metaphor works really well as an organizing principle.However, I think that the "tripod" really served no purpose in the organization of the subsequent scientific challenges to Darwinism, nor to his description of contemporary attempts to extend the Modern Synthesis. Maybe Gould used to organize his own thinking, maybe it's more explicit in Kellog's work, but I really didn't see it in Gould's book.I also didn't really see Gould mention creationism beyond a couple of very brief mentions. The book, after all, is about contemporary, scientific attempts to extend the Modern Synthesis, not an encyclopedic description of all "challenges" to Darwinian, however on the fringes of common sense they may be.As far as Gould's "legacy or notoriety", I do think that Gould intended this book to be seen later as a prescient description of where science would be going in the 21st century. I think that Gould was aware that some of the ideas presented would not pan out, but I'm sure he was confident that much of what was outlined would bear some kind of fruit, even it the results end up not being exactly where Gould thought they would be.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Thanks for a coherent response.I will go into a little more detail later.Perhaps, I am biased somewhat.The very first time I heard Will Provine speak it was about the "history" of biology and the evolutionary synthesis in the early 80s. Will referred to Kellog and he based his understanding of bio-history on that being an example of what was being read by evolutionists or not. This lead him to call the "constriction" of bio-history that period of time when the number of books being discussed decreased to a few. Gould contiues this point of view NOT as history but as the future of biology under the term "restriction".I can not accept that changing the prefix is supposed to make me think differently about the content. After Will lectured I happened to meet Marjorie Green for the first time without knowing who she was then. I discussed that I felt that Will misused present day living biology by calling something a "constriction" when all he was discussing was what some elder biologists read or did not read. She AGREED with ME!!So Gould's attempt to structure his use of language and biology by making the student HAVE to respond via a critical dissection of Kellog or not seems contrived and simply but a problem really for the HISTORY of biology not the contingency of his logic as he wonts it to have been.It was not that for me IN THE SAME REAL CONTEXT. It is not like I am responding from a foreign perspective on this. I think his logic is valuable but I feel his justification begs for more focus than can be generalized from unless all students were forced to be in a lineage of Gould chair sitters which in particular he was against with respect to what the term "Darwinist" meant anyway. I think this is Dakwin's view of Gould as well.(The reason I feel that too much effort was spent on Creationism is due his faliure to read Thompson as opening up a place for teleology while deploring it at the same dogma, his reluctance to see how creationists might not see his logic but feel the mathemas he/Gould suspects do not fit in with a disjunction in biogeographic space where Gould insists contrary to anagensis which means that his reading of Paley and Aggasiz would be flawed such that there is no "transmorgification" (his word)of Paley vs Agassiz or Maynard Smith vs Goodwin(or however he has it). This will take more of an effort from me than a parenthesis however).Every word and letter means something to Gould and I am rather confident that his use of the history of biology can not be univocal in this regard. That is how I am rather confident that his legacy will be not succeed beyond noterioty unless LOGIC is better amplified throughout biology and less reflexion is made on language. This is the only way I think Gould's point against Dawkins will succeed as well. Who knows maybe the DNA 'code' is only a reflexion of organisms causing amino acids to act like gyroscopes (which does not occurr without the creatures gentle heat and fermentation, such that the second codon is but a reflexion of the apparent infinite stiffness of a given spun gyro's primary ring...more on this deconstruction of information ideas and DNA later for Hoot....)Edited by Brad McFall, : letter hEdited by Brad McFall, : spellingEdited by Brad McFall, : more of the sameEdited by Brad McFall, : No reason given.