Gould, Steven Jay, ed. 1992. “Critical Social Ethics.” Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Gould, Steven Jay, ed. 1991. “Paradigms in Political Theory.” Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “Foucault's Critique of Functional Marxism.” Rethinking Marxism 3, no. 3&4: 297-307.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “The Analytic Defense of Functional Marxism and Law.” The Critical Criminologist 2, no. 3: 3-4,12,15-16.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “U.S. Disinformation and the DPR of Korea.” The Critical Criminologist 2, no. 4.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1990. “Neilsen, K. and B. Ware Analyzing Marxism.” Radical Review of Books no. 2: 33-36. . (Book review).
Gould, Steven Jay. 1989. “Non-Voluntary Compliance.” Philosophy Research Archives 14, 115-20.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1989. “Towards a Marxist Theory of the State.” Philosophy Research Archives 14, 1-22.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1989. “Truitt on Technological Determinism.” Nature, Society and Thought 2, no. 4: 508-16.
Gould, Steven Jay. 1988. “Vincent, Andrew Theories of the State.” Philosophical Books 28, no. 3: 177-82. (Book review).
Most of you guys weren't aware that the mild-mannered Harvard professor of paleontology led a double life as a professor of political science at Iowa.
Then there's this charming bit of snipping from the biography of Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore: (the posted parts are in blue)
A few days later Emma arrived back from Hastings with Etty, clearly `not one bit better.' They were just in time to celebrate Horace's sixth birthday and begin receiving a house full of guests. A troop of Wedgwood cousins were due, and Charles's sisters Susan and Catherine. A week afterwards Down House was groaning. There were ten children and six adults, not counting the staff and extra servants who catered for the crowd. `A good lot too many,' Charles lamented, `now poor dear Etty is so indifferent.' They had all come for the christening of his namesake, the defective baby Charles, which took place on the 21st in the parish church. Darwin's cold ,suddenly turned into my old vomiting,' and he was back to square one. It was all `very disheartening.' The work, the worry, the crush - it destroyed in a fortnight all `the wonderful good which Moor Park did me.' His health had vanished `like a flash of lightning."'
There was only one thing to be done. Both invalids had to go back to Dr Lane's: first Etry with Emma on the 29th, and when Emma returned two weeks later, Charles would `relieve guard' and join Etty, who was staying there all summer. Still he pressed on, piecing together one after another of `my many horrid puzzles,' declaring that `I would sooner be the wretched contemptible invalid, which I am, than live the life of an idle squire.' He dropped a letter to the Gardeners' Chronicle about dun-coloured ponies, trying to fathom the origin of the domestic horse, and then readmitted himself to the sanatorium.
Here he continued his half-begging, self-mocking letters, eliciting information while converting the donor - softening up breeders to obtain gulliver runts (pigeons) and softening up old presbyterians like Asa Gray at the Harvard herbarium: `It is extremely kind of you to say that my letters have not bored you very much, & it is almost incredible to me, for I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science.' Or, at least, true science as then was. He played backgammon with Etty every day, watching her tenderly for fear that he would have to relive the Malvern tragedy all over again. But no, she seemed to be getting her strength back, and Charles returned to Downe on 30 June much happier." Back to the grindstone; back to the old problem - the laws of variation.
It was turning into a long, hot summer - the time of the Indian Mutiny: an `Indian Summer' when he should have been in his meadow, watching his pigeons, salting his snails, not sitting indoors. He finally finished `variation' in July and posted pages to Huxley for checking. He was still trying to relate foetal divergence and the
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distinctness of species - trying to put some embryological muscle behind his theory. Huxley agreed that the more distinct the adults, the earlier their embryos begin to differ. But Darwin had also cited French opinion that the specialized organs appear first in the foetus. Huxley would have none of this. The body is like a house, he laughed; the builder starts with the walls and rafters, not `the cornices, cupboards, & grand-piano.' The point was taken. With a sigh Darwin expunged the passages, `which I rather grieve about, as 1 wished it to be true; but alas a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone."'
Clearly, it was a case of two steps forward, and one back. He was still tabulating the ratio of varieties in plants a week later when young Lubbock spotted `the grossest blunder' in one of his assumptions, which cost him `2 or 3 weeks lost work.' He had to borrow the plant catalogues and start all over again. `I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid Dog in all England,' he howled. From then on he paid Downe's `laboriously careful Schoolmaster,' Ebenezer Norman, to do the tabulating in his free time." And Hooker too went to pains to help.
Others offered aid. Gray supplied details on American plants. He was not only a `cautious ... reasoner,' but clearly a `loveable man;' and Darwin, at the risk of seeming `horribly egotistical,' now told him what he was up to. He ran through his twenty-year labour, ending up: `As an honest man I must tell you that I have come to the heterodox conclusion that there are no such things as independently created species - that species are only strongly defined varieties. I know that this will make you despise me.' How species changed from their ancestral stock, he had come to understand from the 'agriculturists & horticulturists.' `I believe I see my way pretty clearly on the means used by nature to change her species and adapt them.' Hooker, he said, had already read his section on geographical distribution and `had never been so much staggered about the permanence of species."'
Gray was fascinated, admitting his long-held belief `that there is some law, some power inherent in plants,' causing variants to appear. `I suppose this is your starting point,' he ventured - and then asked ,can you get at the law of variation'? This was Darwin's cue. He knew that Gray had not cottoned on; they had similar interests but were working on separate lines. On 5 September he did what he told Wallace was impossible in a letter. He sent Gray a detailed account of his views, explaining the difficulties he faced, the `frightful' problems of embryology, facts which had kept him orthodox the
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<SNIP to page 474>
Darwin
He struggled on through April, stripping off the references, smoothing the text, and removing the umpteen illustrations of every esoteric point. Finally he had boiled down Natural Selection to its core theory in 155,000 words. It was a most atypical science book for the age, turgid but saleable.
Lyell agented it, selling the idea to John Murray. Murray had one of the best back lists in London, with the Principles of Geology, Hooker's Himalayan Journals, Darwin's Journal, Layard's Nineveh, Grote's Greece, and even a Muck Manual for farmers, and he was already planning his autumn leads - an account of the search for Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, Wellington's dispatches, and Samuel Smiles's Self-Help. `Does he know at all the subject of the book'? Darwin asked. There was some worry; after all, Murray had rejected Martineau's Eastern Life for its `infidel tendency.' Darwin added a PS to Lyell. `Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable'? - by which he meant that `I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, &c. &c.' Murray was reassured by Lyell, and indeed broke his cardinal rule and agreed to publish the manuscript sight unseen, offering Darwin two-thirds of the net proceeds.
Being a practical man, Murray was more concerned with the title. Darwin was set to call it An Abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties through Natural Selection, and even with the Victorians' propensity for top-heavy titles Murray saw the profits draining away. Sample chapters went off to him, including the `dry and dull' one on distribution that Hooker's children had enjoyed, accompanied by the squeal, `God help him if he tries to read it.' Darwin thought it `will be popular to a certain extent ... amongst scientific and semi-scientific men,' but not with the literary set; and it was too `intolerably dry and perplexing' to sweep Vestiges-like through the novel-grubbing middle class." Murray must have agreed because he anticipated printing only 500 copies.
In late May Darwin's health failed again, but a week's hydropathy fortified him for the proofs. He needed it; the prose appalled him in print, and he made drastic revisions, blackening pages and pinning notes to the smudged mess, offering to defray the cost. Through late June he continued chopping and changing; `my corrections are terrifically heavy,' he told Lyell. He bemoaned the `miserable' mire to Hooker; but the man was `deep in the mud' of his own proofs, writing up the flora of Darwin's favourite colony, Tasmania. Here Hooker publicly signalled support for Darwin. Not that he would
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Breaking Cover
compare his effort with the Origin of Species. That, Hooker beamed, would be like putting `a ragged handkerchief beside a Royal Standard.' Huxley too was generous. He had only one cavil: that domestic races 'originating from a single stock (say bulldogs and greyhounds, descendants of the same wild dog) do not produce sterile offspring when crossed, as distinct wild species do. Until breeders achieved this degree of separation - actually made new species from a single stock - the analogy with natural selection remained incomplete. `You speak of finding a flaw in my hypothesis,' Darwin rallied him, `& this shows you do not understand its nature. It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw & holes as sound parts.' But `I can carry in it my fruit to market for a short distance over a gentle road; not I fear that you will give the poor rag such a devil of a shake that it will fall all to atoms; & a poor rag is better than nothing to carry one's fruit to market in.'
Darwin was `as weak as a child' by September and barely able to carry anything, however delicately. He planned a long sojourn at a spa when it was all over, perhaps the new one beside the bleak Yorkshire moors, at Ilkley, suitably remote from anywhere. Through fits of sickness and gloom he trudged on, scrawling on the revised sheets, driven by `an insanely strong wish to finish my accursed book' and `banish the whole subject from my mind!' Murray absorbed the enormous £72 bill for corrections and upped his estimate of the Origin's saleability, fixing to print 1250 copies and setting the publication date for November. The title continued to evolve under Murray's selective pressure. It had slimmed down to On the Origin of Species and Varieties by Means of Natural Selection, when Darwin improved matters more by docking `and Varieties.'
Clean sheets of the `abominable volume' went off to Lyell. Darwin remained `foolishly anxious' about his verdict, keen for him `to come round,' more so than for `any other dozen men.' Lyell did indeed give Darwin `very great kudos,' and others noted `how eager Charles Lyell is ... about Darwin's forthcoming book on Species.' But then, as Lyell's relative Bunbury admitted, it is `sure to be very curious and important ... however mortifying it may be to think that our remote ancestors were jelly fishes.' Lyell was still grappling with imponderables, still sensing that `the dignity of man is at stake.' How to accept a soulless ape ancestor while saving human face? Darwin had little sympathy. `I am sorry to say that I have no "consolatory view" on the dignity of man. I am content that man will probably advance, and care not much whether we are looked at as mere savages in a remotely distant future."'
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