Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

marine environment of the Cambrian period, well known to
the general public. He claimed that these fossils demonstrated
an early diversification of life, followed by the extinction of
many lineages. Had the lineage that led to vertebrates become
extinct, something that could have happened by chance,
humans might not exist at all. Gould’s 1996 book Full House
explained what appeared to be progress, whether in evolution
or in baseball, to results from chance events followed by
unequal success, rather than an inherent upward progression
(see progress, concept of).
For several decades, Gould contributed columns entitled
“This View of Life” to Natural History magazine and
collected them into popular books. These essays also reveal
Gould’s great breadth of knowledge into almost every subject,
and his ability to connect them. He also made many
readers aware (in his book The Mismeasure of Man) of how
science can be used by some humans to oppress others, as in
the pseudoscience of eugenics. Gould was also a major contributor
to the educational campaign against creationism,
which, as he explained in Rocks of Ages, he considered an
unnecessary pitting of religion against science. As a result of
his popular writings, Gould made almost every aspect of evolution,
from the history of the development of the theory, to
the evidence that supports it, to the way it works, accessible
and interesting to the general public. He died May 20, 2002.
Further Reading
Eldredge, Niles, and Stephen Jay Gould. “Punctuated equilibria: An
alternative to phyletic gradualism.” In Models in Paleobiology,
edited by T. J. M Schopf, 82–115. San Francisco, Calif.: Freeman,
Cooper and Co., 1972.
Gould, Stephen Jay. Bully for Brontosaurus. New York: Norton,
1991.
———. Crossing Over: Where Art and Science Meet. New York:
Three Rivers Press, 2000.
———. Dinosaur in a Haystack. New York: Harmony Books, 1995.
———. Eight Little Piggies. New York: Norton, 1993.
———. The Flamingo’s Smile. New York: Norton, 1985.
———. Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin.
New York: Harmony Books, 1996.
———. Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. New
York: Harmony Books, 1998.
———. The Lying Stones of Marrakech. New York: Harmony Books,
2000.
———. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox. New York:
Harmony Books, 2003.
———. Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. New York: Norton, 1983.
———. I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History.
New York: Harmony Books, 2002.
———. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton, 1981.
———. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1977.
———. The Panda’s Thumb. New York: Norton, 1980.
———. Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist’s Guide to a Precisely
Arbitrary Countdown. New York: Harmony Books, 1997.
———. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life.
New York: Ballantine Publications, 1999.
———. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2002.
———. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1987.
———. An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas. New
York: Norton, 1987.
———. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History.
New York: Norton, 1989.
———, and Richard Lewontin. “The spandrels of San Marco and
the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme.”
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205
(1979): 581–598.
Grant, Peter See Darwin’s finches.
Grant, Rosemary See Darwin’s finches.
Gray, Asa
Gray, Asa (1810–1888) American Botanist, Evolutionary
Scientist Asa Gray was an early defender of Darwinian evolution
in the United States. He was representative of a large
number of English and American scientists and theologians
who accepted evolutionary science while maintaining their
traditional Christian beliefs. Antievolutionists, also called creationists
(see creationism), were much more common in the
20th century than in the half century following the publication
of Darwin’s Origin of Species (see Darwin, Charles; origin
of species [book]). Gray is representative of the Christian
scholars who embraced Darwinian science, not only because
of Gray’s prominence but also because he was a personal correspondent
of Charles Darwin even before the publication of
the Origin of Species.
Born November 18, 1810, Gray was trained as a medical
doctor. Even while practicing medicine, his main interest was
the study of plants. He learned much from America’s leading
botanist, John Torrey, and by 1831 Gray was ready to abandon
medical practice and pursue botany full-time. For the
next five years, he conducted botanical investigations with
Torrey, which culminated in their coauthorship of the Flora
of North America. Gray spent a year as a member of the scientific
corps of the American Exploring Expedition in Europe
and also studied what was just becoming known about Japanese
botany. In 1842 he received a faculty appointment in
natural history at Harvard University.
It was not only botany that Gray learned from Torrey.
Torrey’s firm Presbyterian faith led Gray to consider his own,
and in 1835 Gray underwent a Christian conversion experience.
Gray found that Christianity led him to investigate science
ever more enthusiastically. Gray put his faith into action
by church work that included teaching a black Sunday school
class at a time when prejudice against African Americans was
still standard, even in the North.
At this time, as a devotee of William Paley (see natural
theology) and opponent of Chambers’s Vestiges of Creation
(see Chambers, Robert), Gray resisted the idea of the
transmutation of species (today called evolution). In this, he
was consistent with most scientists of his time. He did not
use the Bible as a source of information about Earth history;