The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox:

Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2003. Hardcover. Used: Acceptable. Condition good. Isbn 0-224-06309-X,022406309X. Mending and Minding the Misconceived Gap Between Science and the Humanities. Though this final book is not the most accessible of Stephen Jay Gould's meditations on science and culture, it is a complex and revealing look at one of the late paleontologist's great passions: the unity of human endeavour. The titular hedgehog and fox refer to the classic dichotomy of persistence opposed to agility of thought, which Gould uses as a backbone in comparing, contrasting and balancing science and the humanities. Unlike many scientists, he does not consider humanities (nor religion) to be inferior to his discipline. Drawing liberally from Renaissance and Scientific Revolution sources, Gould shows that the perceived differences in the two cultures are mostly false. Readers of EO Wilson's Consilience will find many similarities here, though Gould emphatically rejects Wilson's conclusion that reductionism is an appropriate way to unite the two cultures and offers examples of when such an approach might fail. If we discover that a majority of human cultures have favored infanticide under certain conditions, and that such a practice arose for good Darwinian reasons, shall we then claim that we have resolved the question of the rightness of such a practice with a "yea"? This volume is presented by its editor almost unchanged from the manuscript Gould had finished shortly before his death. The result is a book with such unedited detail that its dense blend of history and philosophy is at times overwhelmingly difficult. Nevertheless, Gould's deeply held conviction that human understanding comes from every one of our cultural efforts shines through. In characteristic form, Gould weaves the ideas of some of Western society's greatest thinkers, from Bacon to Galileo to E.O. Wilson, with the uncelebrated ideas of lesser-known yet pivotal intellectuals. He uses the ideas of these men to undo an assumption born in the 17th century and continuing to this day, that science and the humanities stand in opposition. In the title and throughout the book he uses a metaphor drawn from Erasmus and a more obscure 16th century scholar named Konrad Gesner (an illustrator of the animal kingdom) of the hedgehog - who goes after one thing at a measured pace, systematically investigating all; the Fox - skilled at many things, intuitive and fast; and the magister's pox - a censure from the Catholic Church involved in Galileo's downfall: a metaphor which illustrates the different ways of responding to knowledge - from a scientific, humanistic and fearful way. He argues that in fact each of them should borrow from each other and thereby improve their own given disciplines. Gould then delves into a fiery discussion of the notion of consilience first put forward by E.O. Wilson, which argues that scientific method (specifically reductionism) is supreme, uniting all the disciplines. Wilson holds that everything in nature is possible to predict - mathematically. Gould holds that in fact events in nature - including evolution - were and are random, each event contingent on the next.