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June 29, 2004

Much ado about what?

Doing a search on PUBMED, I get:


  • 6 responses for spandrel
  • 28 responses for punctuated equilibria
  • 107 responses for evolutionarily stable strategies
  • 110 responses for inclusive fitness
  • 263 responses for kin selection

"Not scientific" as they say. But when I hear people saying that "Stephen Jay Gould was a world famous evolutionary thinker," I wonder if they have ever heard about punctuated equilibria. Stephen Jay Gould benefited from the Julia Roberts Effect, despite being horsey, she is one of America's beauties, because she is America's A-list actress, while she is an A-list actress because she gets big roles...because she is one of America's beauties.... Stephen Jay Gould was one of the century's greatest evolutionary thinkers because he had so many columns and was such a public presence, and he was a public presence who got to comment on baseball because he was one of the century's greatest evolutionary thinkers (something milder seems to have happened to Stephen Hawking, though his ideas are not nearly as kooky from what I gather [and can admit he was wrong], and at least he suffers from a disease which makes his survival somewhat miraculous).

Posted by razib at 06:52 PM