OXFORD, England --You walk out of a soft-falling rain into the living room of an Oxford don, with great walls of books, handsome art and, on the far side of the room, graceful windows onto a luxuriant garden. Does this man, arguably the world's most influential evolutionary biologist, spend most of his time here or in the field? Prof. Richard...
Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent evolutionary biologist, gained broad public attention for exposing how scientists' biases can skew their research. In one celebrated case, he charged that a famous study of human skulls in the mid-19th century had been manipulated, probably unconsciously, to support racist notions. The skulls had been collected by...
Scientists have often been accused of letting their ideology influence their results, and one of the most famous cases is that of Morton's skulls -- the global collection amassed by the 19th-century physical anthropologist Samuel George Morton. In a 1981 book, ''The Mismeasure of Man,'' the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould asserted that Morton,...
Stephen Jay Gould (10. september 1941 i Queens, New York City – 20. maj 2002) var en amerikansk palæontolog. Han var desuden blandt sin generations mest indflydelsesrige og læste populærvidenskabelige forfattere.
Gould studerede ved Antioch College i hjembyen New York og blev senere doktor i palæontologi fra Columbia University. I 1973 blev han professor i evolutions- og udviklingsbiologi ved Harvard University, hvor han bl.a. specialiserede sig i udvikling og artsdannelse hos fossile landsnegle. Han var desuden tilknyttet American Museum of Natural History i New York. I sine sidste leveår underviste han i biologi og evolution ved New York University.
Hans største bidrag til videnskaben var hans teori om afbrudte ligevægte (punctuated equilibrium), som han udviklede sammen med Niles Eldredge i 1972. Teorien hævder, at evolutionen er kendetegnet ved lange perioder af evolutionær stabilitet, som senere afbrydes punktvist af evolutionære fremskridt. Teorien var omstridt og stod i kontrast til gradualismen, der indebærer at evolutionær forandring sker gennem løbende. Fold ud