Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 30, 1994 TAG: 9403300023
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE staff writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He's been on the cover of Newsweek, interviewed in Rolling Stone, won lots of awards, hold honorary degrees from 27 universities and colleges - 27! - and is all the rave on the lecture circuit.
This is a guy who thinks bacteria run the world. Who keeps thousands of snail shells in his office. Who writes entire essays about the bone in a panda's wrist, baseball batting averages, Hershey bars and Mickey Mouse's face. And who says Charles Darwin only got half the story.
You must check this guy out. He's speaking at Virginia Tech tonight at 7:30 in Burruss Auditorium.
Gould is a leading paleontologist - a fan of fossils - and evolutionary theorist who has pitched one heckuva curve ball to the scientific community.
In attempting to answer the age old questions _ "Where do we come from, and why are we here?" - Gould strikes out on his own, leaving traditional creationist and evolution theories in the dust.
He thinks we are here because of "punctuated equilibrium," not the slow, deliberate and elegant process of natural selection.
Nope. Instead evolution is punctuated by haphazard environmental events - meteors, floods, a new species appears - with periods of relative calm, equilibrium in between.
His ideas have intrigued and maddened critics on both sides of the debate, but Gould - born and bred in Queens - can take the punches and, indeed, seems to thrive on the controversy.
Like astronomer Carl Sagan, Gould brings science to the masses, writing and talking in a compelling style that draws his audience in. Take this exchange on bacteria, for instance, during an interview this year:
Q: But they're running the world, are they?
Gould: Oh, sure.
Q: How are they running the world?
Gould: There are more of them than we are, they can't be nuked into oblivion, they've always been here, their biomass is greater than ours, they live in a bigger range of environments, they'll be here forever until the sun explodes. They're just allowing us to strut our hour upon the stage, that's all.
Gould traces his fascination for natural history to the first time he saw Tyrannosaurus rex in a museum as a boy. He never left New York City until he was 10, and says the only contact he had with the natural world was cockroaches, dogs and Dodger fans.
An avid baseball follower, Gould used the disappearance of the .400 batting average as the subject of an essay once.
So, who knows what'll come up as he speaks tonight on "Human Equality, Science and Evolution."
Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould speaks tonight at 7:30 at Burruss Auditorium, Virginia Tech. 231-8508.
by CNB