What did Stephen J. Gould mean by this statement?

Eugene Shubert

Eugene Shubert

Valued Senior Member
What exactly did Stephen J. Gould mean by this statement:

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question. Ask anyone to name the most familiar of all evolutionary series and you will almost surely receive, as an answer: horses, of course...Modern horses are not only depleted relative to horses of the past; on a larger scale, all major lineages of the Perissodactyla (the larger mammalian group that includes horses) are pitiful remnants of former copious success. Modern horses, in other words, are failures within a failure -- about the worst possible exemplars of evolutionary progress, whatever such a term might mean."

Gould, Stephen J. in Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Three Rivers Press, New York, (1996), p.57,71.

Source: http://www.myevolutionquotes.com.

This strikes me as support for the theory of devolution.
 
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One more time.
There is no Theory of Devolution, simply your own misunderstood take on what evolution actually means.
And by the way, superb choice of example:
Sorry, no matching quotes were found in these sources using your search criteria. Please modify your search parameters and try again.
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From your second link... :rolleyes:
 
Hey,
You guys did not answer his first question
What exactly did Stephen J. Gould mean by this statement:

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question. Ask anyone to name the most familiar of all evolutionary series and you will almost surely receive, as an answer: horses, of course...Modern horses are not only depleted relative to horses of the past; on a larger scale, all major lineages of the Perissodactyla (the larger mammalian group that includes horses) are pitiful remnants of former copious success. Modern horses, in other words, are failures within a failure -- about the worst possible exemplars of evolutionary progress, whatever such a term might mean."

Gould, Stephen J. in Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Three Rivers Press, New York, (1996), p.57,71.
Click to expand...

Seems like a good question to me and it is not one I can answer. Given the blunt clarity of your responses to his other question, perhaps you can answer the first.
 
Doreen said:
Hey,
You guys did not answer his first question
Seems like a good question to me and it is not one I can answer. Given the blunt clarity of your responses to his other question, perhaps you can answer the first.
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That's right, because I couldn't find anything other "not found" to put the selected quote into context.
I haven't read the book so I don't know how much more (if any) explanation is given.
I do know that Eugene has before now taken quotes out of context to "prove" his point, or ignored the overall text to select specific sentences which on first look appear to back up his "theory".
 
What is the question? I believe he is measuring success in terms of numbers. Horses are a familiar evolutionary series, not that this implies progress.
 
Dywyddyr said:
That's right, because I couldn't find anything other "not found" to put the selected quote into context.
I haven't read the book so I don't know how much more (if any) explanation is given.
I do know that Eugene has before now taken quotes out of context to "prove" his point, or ignored the overall text to select specific sentences which on first look appear to back up his "theory".
Click to expand...
I didn't know the context, but I'm not sure it's best to pre-emptively assume he will use your answers to bolster his theory.

Spidergoat,
As far as numbers being what he meant: it is a very odd thing to say, I think, and I do hope he comes up with more of the context, if he means numbers. To refer to horses as failures because there are less of them would imply that success is numbers rather than continuation. Grass would probably have us beat, as of now, but I would hardly call us failures.
 
There's not much context for the Gould quote. Chances are he explained in more detail what he was talking about in the original source.
 
I followed the link but you have to join something.

I googled and found the quote in several places, but alone as a quote.

So, up to the OP writer or anyone with a good SJG collection at home.
 
Doreen said:
I didn't know the context, but I'm not sure it's best to pre-emptively assume he will use your answers to bolster his theory.

Spidergoat,
As far as numbers being what he meant: it is a very odd thing to say, I think, and I do hope he comes up with more of the context, if he means numbers. To refer to horses as failures because there are less of them would imply that success is numbers rather than continuation. Grass would probably have us beat, as of now, but I would hardly call us failures.
Click to expand...

He says it's an arbitrary measurement of success, but I think he is challenging the notion that the animal which evolved into the modern horse was just a "pre-horse", as opposed to a successful species in it's own right. There was no goal of becoming a horse as the final pinnacle of evolution.
 
spidergoat said:
He says it's an arbitrary measurement of success, but I think he is challenging the notion that the animal which evolved into the modern horse was just a "pre-horse", as opposed to a successful species in it's own right. There was no goal of becoming a horse as the final pinnacle of evolution.
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Well, that makes some sense and I assume he was being polemical and not exactly careful. I mean the 'pre-horse' is clearly not successful now since its numbers are completely depleted. But it is good to challenge the notion that what we see today is final or necessarily better than what went before. It might be better for the current environment, or it might not even be that. It might have just managed to squeek by some intermediate ice age or something and some pre-horse would do even better today.
 
Doreen said:
I didn't know the context, but I'm not sure it's best to pre-emptively assume he will use your answers to bolster his theory.
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:confused:
I was talking about his initial post (and others he's made on the same topic), not any possible responses to my reply.
 
Followup:

http://www.everythingimportant.org/SDA/

Eugene, are you a Seventh-Dayer?

Hey, no offense, man: my cousin and her kid are SDAs. But I don't think you guys can run around trying to fit this theory. It implies directionalism, which isn't really supportable.
 
What it sounds like is that Gould is writing a popular book with a role in the general discussion. One of the disturbing features of the general discussion is a tendency of people to think of evolution as a directed process, as a progression from the less fit to the more fit in some kind of overall, God's eye view - as progress, improvement, perfection.

So he observes that thinking of what remains, of the residue of the eons of the misfortunately dead, as some kind of pinnacle of something, is wrong. And he rubs that lesson in.

At least, that's how it reads in the little bit we have to read.

The larger point, naturally, is that it doesn't really matter what Gould meant by it. This is not something that one can argue from authority. If Gould said something wrong or dumb, so be it.
 
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Eugene Shubert:

What did you not understand about the explanations that were provided to you when you asked the same question on Richard Dawkins' forum?
 
Eugene Shubert said:
What exactly did Stephen J. Gould mean by this statement:

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question. Ask anyone to name the most familiar of all evolutionary series and you will almost surely receive, as an answer: horses, of course...Modern horses are not only depleted relative to horses of the past; on a larger scale, all major lineages of the Perissodactyla (the larger mammalian group that includes horses) are pitiful remnants of former copious success. Modern horses, in other words, are failures within a failure -- about the worst possible exemplars of evolutionary progress, whatever such a term might mean."

Gould, Stephen J. in Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Three Rivers Press, New York, (1996), p.57,71.

Source: http://www.myevolutionquotes.com.

This strikes me as support for the theory of devolution.
Click to expand...

I think he was referring to the popular theme in evolution discussions today where evolution and evolved are used as synonyms of progress that is a direction is assigned to evolution. You can see this often in the debates where evolution is described as simple things becoming more complex over time, as the appearance of design leading to perfection is debated in circles which we are supposed to consider as scientific.

The problems in addressing these constructs are many and wide spread and are more ideologically inclined than scientifically supported.

However, we are used to a scientific model of causality and sequence, so this model of evolution was inevitable. The evidence that some things are less complex than they used to be falsifies that notion of progress [unless one questions if simplification from complexity may also be a form of progress] but again these are subjective considerations rather than scientific ones
 
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