Darwin's Middle Road
...The theory of natural selection arose neither as a workmanlike induction from nature's facts, nor as a mysterious bolt from Darwin's subconscious, triggered by an accidental reading of Malthus. It emerged instead as the result of a conscious and productive search, proceeding in a ramifying but ordered manner, and utilizing both the facts of natural history and an astonishingly broad range of insights from disparate disciplines far from his own....
American paleontologist, essayist, and educator. Raised in New York City, Gould graduated from Antioch College and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1967. That same year he joined the faculty of Harvard University as a professor of geology and zoology and taught courses in paleontology, biology, and the history of science. Witty and fluent, Gould demystified science for lay readers in the essays he wrote for a regular column in Natural History magazine; many of these were collected in Ever Since Darwin (1977), Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983), and Eight Little Piggies (1993). Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981), which questioned traditional ways of testing intelligence, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for essays and criticism. A renowned neo-Darwinian, Gould championed the theory of evolution throughout his career; his last book on this subject, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, appeared in 2002. See also stephenjaygould.org. 