The Science and Humanism of Stephen Jay Gould

摘要

Undoubtedly, Stephen Jay Gould is one of the great thinkers of the Twentieth Century. Gould was a leading figure in the fields of evolutionary biology and paleontology, and made important theoretical and empirical contributions to those fields over his accomplished career. The Science and Humanism of Stephen Jay Gould, by sociologists Richard York and Brett Clark, broadly examines the philosophical un-derpinnings of Gould's work, and its application for under-standing the interweaving relations among and between nat-ural and social systems. This book provides a concise, yet re-markably thorough, survey of key aspects of Gould's power-ful worldview and philosophy, applying a rich overarching analysis of a scientific perspective that reveals numerous in-sights into the complexity of nature and, compellingly, soci-ety. It explores the larger themes that run through Gould's work, including historical change and contingency, as well as the structural and multilevel character of his analysis. In ad-dition, the book examines Gould's long running critique of biological determinism and his efforts towards developing a humanistic component for understanding the interrelation-ship between nature and the human condition.