The Hedgehog, The Fox And The Magister's Pox
Mending and Minding the Misconceived Gap Between Science and the Humanities
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Completed shortly before his death, this is the last work of science from the most celebrated popular science writer in the world.
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 their ides to undo an assumption born in the seventeenth century and continuing to this day, that science and the humanities stand in opposition. Gould uses the metaphor 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: to illustrate the different ways of responding to knowledge - in a scientific, humanistic or fearful way. He argues that in fact each would benefit by borrowing from the other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The same artful brew of miscellany with which Gould treated readers of Natural Historymagazine for 30 years is again pressed into service in this volume, which the famous Harvard evolutionary biologist finished shortly before his death in May 2002. Gould's point of departure is the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus' proverb about the cunning fox versus the persistent hedgehog, which the author employs to exemplify what he asserts is the proper relationship between the sciences and the humanities they are separate but equal players, he says, in the joint enterprise of wisdom. In his inimitable style, Gould mines rare and idiosyncratic sources to debunk the common notion of science and the humanities (which includes religion in Gould's taxonomy) as mortal foes. But in the end it amounts to a broadside at E.O. Wilson, whose 1998 book, Consilience, posited a reductionist model of the disciplines joined in a kind of Chain of Being, with particle physics on one end, ethics and religion on the other, and biology somewhere in between. Admitting his annoyance that Wilson got to the term first, Gould argues that consilience (a word originated by the philosopher of science William Whewell in 1840) more correctly applies to his own theory than Wilson's. While this book is a fine read, rich with learning and insight, it has its cryptic, unreadable moments, possibly because Gould's publisher out of respect for the deceased author, it said decided to issue the book largely untampered with except for copyediting changes.
