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Thanks for making me brush up on it. You're right - he doesn't call it the "hopeful monster" - he calls it punctuated equilibrium. But still saying Darwin's theory of slow gradual incremental change was not coorect. Here's from an article he wrote found www.stephenjgould.org:

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record—geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)—reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record.

The entire article is very good. I am being very selective to be brief, but found the following interesting:

I am both angry at and amused by the creationists; but mostly I am deeply sad. Sad for many reasons. Sad because so many people who respond to creationist appeals are troubled for the right reason, but venting their anger at the wrong target.

It is true that scientists have often been dogmatic and elitist. It is true that we have often allowed the white-coated, advertising image to represent us—"Scientists say that Brand X cures bunions ten times faster than…" We have not fought it adequately because we derive benefits from appearing as a new priesthood.

It is also true that faceless and bureaucratic state power intrudes more and more into our lives and removes choices that should belong to individuals and communities. I can understand that school curricula, imposed from above and without local input, might be seen as one more insult on all these grounds. ......

But the culprit is not, and cannot be, evolution or any other fact of the natural world. Identify and fight our legitimate enemies by all means, but we are not among them.

...... Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment—a kind of old-time religion on our part.

But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.

"Thanks for making me brush up on it. You're right - he doesn't call it the "hopeful monster" - he calls it punctuated equilibrium. But still saying Darwin's theory of slow gradual incremental change was not coorect."

He doesn't call it the *hopeful monster* theory because it isn't anything like it. No scientist says that speciation happens when one organism gives birth to a new species. Gould was calling for speciation that took place over tens of thousands of years, which is geologically *quick* but still gradual and in line with the main tenets of what Darwin said.

Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment—a kind of old-time religion on our part. But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.

Is that a Gould quote?