"O. how I wish I were a doggie
And Stephie Gould a tree!"
Professor Dennett would ofcourse not stoop so low even now and was gracious enough to provide a copy of his dignified yet deadly communication to NYRB in response to the above articles.One should ofcourse note that while Gould took two years or so to respond, Dennett's response is almost instantaneous!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
To the Editor
Stephen Jay Gould complains that in Darwin's Dangerous Idea
I attack his views via "hint, innuendo, false attribution" and
"caricature." That is false. On the contrary, I went to
extraordinary lengths to ensure that my account of his views was
fair and accurate. One does not lightly embark on the course of
demonstrating that a figure as famous and as honored as Stephen
Jay Gould--"America's evolutionist laureate"--has misled his huge
public about the theories in his field. I knew he was going to
hate my book, and given the effectiveness of his past public
attacks on sociobiology, IQ testing, and other targets of his
disfavor, prudence alone would dictate that I should secure my
criticisms against easy rebuttal and condemnation.
So I did my usual homework, and checked it all out with
experts in the field, including experts sympathetic to Gould,
urging them to correct any errors they spotted. I sent drafts of
my critical chapters to Gould himself more than a year before I
sent the final manuscript to the publisher, inviting him to meet
with me at his convenience, or to respond in whatever way he
chose. I invited him to participate in my seminar that was
reviewing the penultimate draft. Gould kindly met with me in the
summer of 1994, and we spent several hours going over his
objections to the penultimate draft. He raised a variety of
objections, and supported some of them with texts, and wherever
he convinced me I had misinterpreted him, I revised my draft
accordingly. On some points, however, he failed to persuade me,
and one is particularly instructive, since now he accuses me of
deliberately misrepresenting him.
I claimed that for a while he had presented punctuated
equilibrium as a revolutionary "saltationist" alternative to
standard neo-Darwinism, and he implored me to check this claim by
reviewing all his work that dealt with the issue. It started
well; he provided me with his complete curriculum vitae and
photocopies of every piece therein that I requested. When I
reviewed them, however, I found quotations--in addition to those
that appear in my book on pages 286-290--that clearly supported
my claim. I wrote back to him citing these. (Instead of quoting
the quotations from my long letter to Gould, I refer readers to
his notorious 1980 paper in Paleobiology, entitled "Is a new and
general theory of evolution emerging?") I ended my letter: "I
want to be fair. When you begged me to see for myself that your
opponents were foisting a caricature on you, you struck a nerve .
. . . But now I need some more help from you if I am going to say
that your critics are wrong in claiming that you tried on
saltationism and then abandoned it." He never responded to my
letter, or made any further attempt to correct my claims, and now
he describes my interpretation of his views as "a farrago of
false charges." On the contrary, my interpretation is standard
fare, widely accepted in the field. For instance, two eminent
evolutionary biologists, Jerry A. Coyne and Brian Charlesworth of
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, wrote
recently in response to a similar complaint of Gould's in a
letter in Science (18 April, 1997, p338-341.): "In the past 25
years, Eldredge and Gould have proposed so many different
versions of their theory that it is difficult to describe it with
any accuracy. . . . Punctuated equilibrium originally attracted
great attention because it invoked distinctly non-Darwinian
mechanisms for stasis and change. . . . leading to Gould's
pronouncement that 'if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic
theory [of evolution] is accurate, then that theory, as a general
proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as
textbook orthodoxy.'" Neo-Darwinism--the synthetic theory of
evolution that Gould propagandistically elides into "Darwinian
fundamentalism"--is alive and well, in the textbooks and the
laboratories. When Gould suggests otherwise, he is misleading the
public.
Let me say a word about "Darwinian fundamentalism."
Nonsense. I do not espouse the preposterous views Gould
attributes to this mythic creed. Gould labors to create a
caricature of the "strict" adaptationist, a type that occurs
nowhere in nature and is explicitly disavowed, at length, by me
(Darwin's Dangerous Idea, pp. 55, 238-261, 302-5, 326-8, and
elsewhere). In fact, the passage from my book which Gould uses to
anchor his fantasy is misquoted by him. It is adaptationist
thinking, not "adaptation, natural selection's main consequence"
that I say plays a crucial and ubiquitous role in analysis, and
so it does, even though, as I stress again and again, there are
plenty of other factors (comets, and other catastrophes, for
instance) that may well play the predominant causal role in
particular cases. What is amazing is that Gould wrests this
quotation from the very section (pp238-61) in which I attempt to
undo the travesty of Gould's previous efforts over the years to
caricature adaptationist thinking.
When Gould complains further of my "red-baiting" and
"gratuitous speculation" about his religious views, this hits a
new low. As he knows full well, his scientific critics have often
attributed his curious biases to his politics or his views on
religion, and I was pointedly disassociating myself from those
claims. My criticisms are of his science and his logic, not his
political or religious views. But Gould wants to have it both
ways; he lards his own writing with political and religious
motifs and then howls about red-baiting when anybody takes him up
on it--even to dismiss it as beside the point, which is what I
did. Besides, if his politics and religion are to be off limits
to criticism, then he should clean up his own act. It is he, not
I, who has repeatedly failed to live up to the fine principle
that he himself has so eloquently expressed:
There are quite a few minor mistakes in my book, including
three he cites, but they do not substantially affect any of my
criticisms of his views. I have put a list of these errors on the
web site of the Center for Cognitive Studies
. I will not respond
further to Gould's charges, trusting that readers will take him
up on his challenge: "If you think I am being simplistic or
unfair to Dennett in this characterization, read his book. . . "
Do, please; see for yourself; that's the scientific way. John
Maynard Smith praises my book; Stephen Jay Gould attacks it. They
are both authorities, but they can't both be right, can they?
Daniel C. Dennett
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:05:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel Dennett
To: nyrev@nybooks.com
Subject: reply to Gould
[signed hard copy follows, showing italics, and a covering letter, etc.,
by regular mail--DCD]
June 12, 1997
The New York Review of Books
1755 Broadway
New York, NY 10019-3780 Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by
the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse
that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social
goal--why not provide that extra oomph by extending the
umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or
politics? But we cannot, lest we lose the very respect that
tempted us in the first place. (Bully for Brontosaurus,
1991, pp.429-430.)
I am sorry it has come to this. In my discussions with Gould
over the years, I have tried hard to get him to stop
misrepresenting the works that he disapproved of, to clarify his
position, and to disavow the misconstruals of evolutionary theory
that are so often expressed by non-biologists citing him as their
authority. In my book I carefully left open a graceful avenue for
him to take: if he wished, he could claim that his eager public
had been misreading him and then take responsibility for
correcting their readings. He chose instead to turn up the volume
of his vituperation.
Sonny (Sundeep Dougal) Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA