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> Wilson’s far left colleagues Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould was a great man, a great scientist, a great writer, and my personal her
by bambax 5y ago
> Wilson’s far left colleagues Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was a great man, a great scientist, a great writer, and my personal hero. He wasn't from the "far left"; he was intellectually honest and consistent. He spent an inordinate amount of time fighting the teaching of Creationism in US schools.
He also wrote The Mismeasure of Man which rubbed proponents of IQ measurement the wrong way (the Wikipedia article covers the debate quite well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man) and which I think was and still is an important critique of biological determinism.
I don't know much about E. O. Wilson or his life or politics (I will try to learn more), but if you're prepared to dismiss Gould in a side note like this, it probably means you're on a mission and not very honest yourself.
- systemvoltage 5y agoYou left some important details in the quote: > response from Wilson’s far left colleagues Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould who hysterically compared his arguments to thinking that was well on its way down the slippery slope to that dark world where lay the Nazi gas chambers. Anyone comparing their fellow scientists with Nazis is pretty uncharitable and very unscientific, unprofessional and unethical way to criticize someone.
- bambax 5y ago1. Quote required. Gould was the opposite of "hysterical" so if one wants to accuse him of such they need to quote what he said exactly. 2. You yourself are misquoting and misinterpreting. Even the OP, for all its excess, doesn't accuse Gould of "comparing scientists to Nazis"; all it's saying is that Gould may have questioned some theories and pointed that they were on a "slippery slope". Being on a slippery slope means being somewhere on the slope, not (yet) at the bottom of it. Incidentally, in the 40-50 years since the controversy, it has been demonstrated [0] that Nazi racist theories took much of their inspiration from American segregation laws, which were themselves backed up by pseudo-science every step of the way. So saying that there are ways of thinking about man and biology that can lead to gas chambers is not "hysterical", it's an observation of reality and history. [0] See for instance https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-nazis-studied-american-race-laws-for-inspiration https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-nazis-studied-american-race-la...
- soundnote 5y agoGould's guilty of fraud as far as I know.