Or an Intellectual Genealogy on Bayside’s Own Polymath

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Macroevolutionaries

Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould
By Bruce Lieberman & Niles Eldredge (Columbia University Press)

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Macroevolutionaries is a book of essays on topics in macroevolution. It is not a survey but focused on the work of the authors, or more specifically the theories that, along with Steven J. Gould and Elisabeth Vrba, they authored or supported. In particular, this is Gould and Eldredge’s Punctuated Equilibrium hypothesis, (or “punk eek” in the book, customarily, establishing once and for all that not all words ought to be written down), which interprets the evolutionary process as one that alternates between periods of stability and periods of change, and Vrba’s turnover-pulse hypothesis, which is sort of like Punctuated Equilibrium but on an ecological instead of species level.

Gould comes up frequently. Outside of his research and teaching, he wrote a column for Natural History magazine, and wrote popular science books on top of that. Gould wrote in a digressionary style that made use of non-scientific topics or analogies, or looked at the way that science was digested by the public. He had a legendary feud with Richard Dawkins on scientific grounds that mirrored small-p political divisions between them (i.e. calling one right and the other left would be wrong, but the rift had philosophical elements that pair up with other differences between them).

The writing styles itself in the manner of Gould’s writing (though Eldredge has enough of his own career that I do not mean to damn with faint praise there). In the best essays in the collection, such as “Expanding Evolution,” or “Of Cultural Nationalism, Hamlet and the Cloaca Universalis” the book lands a triple by providing an interesting new topic, in manner that reads like Gould, and provides light on Gould’s own life.

Something that I personally liked was how the book makes a point of not going along with the conventional wisdom or popular perception of scientists, particularly Lamarck, (which I also know is the topic of more extensive books by one of the authors) but also Cuvier and Lyle. There is interesting speculation about what historical figures would have thought about different developments, and “Asleep at the Switch” and the notion of the importance of observing null results was interesting to juxtapose with having just read The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World] and his theory about non-radiation of culture.

The collection is in need of a stronger editorial hand. There is times where it feels in competition with Gould, and having learned the wrong sorts of lessons. Reading Gould in compilation can make it look like he was a more discursive writer than he was. He usually was not so broad within the context of a particular essay as the essays here are, or included as many puns. He just knew how to tie horse evolution to Nick and Nora Charles. In this book, the lily is gilded, to the point of obscuring meaning. At some points, a section only makes sense in hindsight, in the context of a later section out of a different essay.

The strangest thing about the book is Vrba, who gets invoked often but in a manner that suggests that she either quit science to code or died. As far as I know, she retired in 2014 and is still talking with the authors.

Something that works in its favor is that it ends strongly. And with the weaker chapters, there is always that One Good Idea in them, choked by weeds. And I confess that my expectations were high for this, in a way that I feel conflicted about any rating.

My thanks to the authors, Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Columbia University Press, for making the ARC available to me.