Book description
Completed shortly before his death, this is the last work of science
from the most celebrated popular science writer in the world.
In characteristic form, Gould weaves the ideas of some of Western
society's greatest thinkers, from Bacon to Galileo to E. O. Wilson,
with the uncelebrated ideas of lesser-known yet pivotal intellectuals.
He uses their ides to undo an assumption born in the seventeenth
century and continuing to this day, that science and the humanities
stand in opposition. Gould uses the metaphor of the hedgehog - who
goes after one thing at a measured pace, systematically investigating
all; the fox - skilled at many things, intuitive and fast; and the
magister's pox - a censure from the Catholic Church involved in
Galileo's downfall: to illustrate the different ways of responding to
knowledge - in a scientific, humanistic or fearful way. He argues that
in fact each would benefit by borrowing from the other.
Stephen Jay Gould was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and
professor of geology at Harvard and the curator for invertebrate
palaeontology in the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He died
in May 2002.
