3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

288 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man
undertaking a one-man expedition to New Guinea in 1928, his leadership role in
evolutionary studies in the United States during the mid-1940s, his spokesmanship
for systematics and evolutionary biology against molecular biology during
the 1960s and his leadership roles in the fields of history and philosophy of biology.
Yet he also knew his limits, for example when he restricted his book on species and
evolution (1963b) to animal species rather than also including plants, as several
friends had suggested, and when he gave up on preparing the second volume of his
history of biology which was to deal with the history of functional-physiological
biology (p. 346). He realized his insufficient familiarity with these subject matters.
It is true that Mayr was not a “media scientist” like his colleagues E. O. Wilson,
S.J. Gould, R. Dawkins who often write for the general public. Therefore Mayr was
not as widely known outside technical circlesasthesecolleaguesare.Mostofhis
publications are directed at his peers and knowledgeable persons including his
latest books on This is Biology (1997b), What Evolution is (2001f) and What makes
Biology unique? (2004a) which explain in general terms genetic variation, adaptation,
speciation, the evolution of man and important aspects of the philosophy of
biology.
On several occasions Mayr triggered or participated in general discussions on
topics outside his own professional expertise. Some time after his “retirement”
he published an editorial in Science entitled “Tenure: A sacred cow?” advocating
a system of periodic tenure review at academic institutions, perhaps at 10-year
intervals (1978b). He knew the difficulties when hiring new staff members. As
a museum director he had hired, among others, two scientists who seemed to
be very promising but later turned out to be failures. [This may indicate that
Mayr was not an especially good judge of people’s abilities.] Four discussants of
his proposal were against it preferring instead to improve the hiring and tenure
granting practices, while two letters were in favor of tenure review. Mayr’s answer
to these letters was longer than the original editorial itself. In his comment on
another editorial in Science he agreed “that the role of the court ought to be
strengthened,” e.g., calling experts with no obligation to either the prosecution
or the defense. He felt “that the extreme emphasis on the adversarial approach
[in our national system] tends to interfere with the finding of the truth” (1989a).
However, all systems no matter how well they are arranged can fail because one has
to deal with people. Mayr’s contribution to a book, Education and Democracy is
entitled “Biology, pragmatism, and liberal education.” Here he dealt with general
concepts which are the basis or scaffolding of our world view, such as democracy,
freedom, altruism, competition, progress, and responsibility. He concluded that in
an up-to-date liberal education more room in the curriculum should be allotted to
the study of the concepts mentioned above and to a more detailed analysis of the
concepts that are the basis of our belief in democracy (1997i).
Some persons accomplish more than others during any given period of time
and Mayr was one of them:
“For very many years I tried to get up every morning at 4:30, take a short
breakfast consisting of tea, cold cereal and yoghurt, and start working at around
5:00. After three hours I had a second breakfast, with my wife, and was in the office