🚀 go-pugleaf

This is a follow-up on Gould's review of Helena Cronin's book:

The New York Review of Books for January 14, 1993, has letters
critical of Gould from John Maynard Smith and Daniel Dennett. 
Maynard Smith says that he disagrees with many points in Gould's
"curiously ill-tempered review" of Helena Cronin's book.  He
comments on only one: Gould seemingly attacks the entire
"kinship selection" approach to the origin of altruism merely
because it is not adequate to explain altruism in humans, 
although it is widely accepted for animals.  Maynard Smith
remarks that:

"It turns out that the failure is no more than this; the gene-
centered argument cannot explain human altruism, which is often
directed to non-relatives.  Coming from anyone this argument
would be odd, but from Gould it is astonishing.  For years he has
been inveighing against those who regard evolution as an
inevitable progress culminating in man, and emphasizing the
marvelous diversity of life.  Now he tells us that a biological
argument fails if it cannot explain some feature peculiar to
humans."

Gould in response tries to clarify his point: he "allowed that
gene selection has resolved many cases of animal altruism" but
objected to Cronin's bringing in humans at the end of the
argument in "the longest chapter in her book."

Comment: Gould often argues that there is nothing very special
about humans, and yet any suggestion that natural selection has
any importance whatever in the area of human behavior and
capacities seems to send him into orbit.  This probably
represents the conflict between Gould the Darwinist and Gould the
left-wing political guru, who wants humanity to be writing on a
clean slate.  Berkeley anthropologist Vincent Sarich describes
Gould's stance as creationism (in the area of human behavior)
without the supernatural creator.

Daniel Dennett's long letter accuses Gould of outrightintellectual 
dishonesty in distorting an opponent's (i.e. Dawkins') position to
make it a "straw man," and then declaring what the opponent really 
said to be a grudging concession to the power of Gould's attack!
A clearly wounded Gould in reply attributes Dennett's angry 
denunciation to "the pungently rarified air of Cambridge,
Massachusetts," and thanks God (!) for "Fenway Park and my local
Bowl-a-drome, where these mental pirouettes can be temporarily
put aside and a semblance of populist normality attained."

Anyone for bowling?