F P Butler

Evolution Without Darwinism: the Legacy of Stephen Jay Gould F P Butler

Publisher Marketing: During a careeer extending from 1965 until his death in 2002, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould became America's most prominent scientist, most prominent spokesman for evolution and most prominent critic of creationism; he also became the most prominent critic of Darwinism and advocate of alternatives to natural selection. Though he was the target of relentless criticism by the Darwinian establishment, late in the century he was vindicated by the research of the new evolutionary developmental biology that owed much to ideas which Gould himself had brought forward. This book tells that story in the context of the history of science and the impact that existentialist Darwinism has had, and is still having, on the lives of every one of us. The findings of evo-devo answer questions which have been pending since the first philosophers philosophized, but these findings contradict ideas that have increasingly dominated intellectual endeavors since the Enlightenment of the 18th century. It has been suggested that we are living through the end of the Modern Age; these findings indicate we are now entering a Post-Enlightenment Age. A real grappling with the issues raised by the work of these scientists will force a reconsideration of nearly everything taught in the universities of the world.