"But how could the existence of distinct species be justified by a theory [evolution] that proclaimed ceaseless change as the most fundamental fact of nature? .... Actually, the existence of distinct species was quite consistent with creationist tenets of a pre-Darwinian era."
Madame, this is what is referred to as "quote mining." Quote mining refers to dishonestly taking a quote out of context to give the impression the author is saying something he wasn't. While I could not find the above quote verbatim after a Google search except on three creationist sites (which indicates the quote has been doctored, too), I did find a similar quote from Gould on the Quote Mine Project page:
[Transitional forms do not exist and the evidence fits creation better than evolution]
"This notion of species as 'natural kinds' fits splendidly with creationist tenets of a pre-Darwinian age. Louis Agassiz, even argued that species are God's individual thoughts, made incarnate so that we might perceive both His majesty and His message. Species, Agassiz wrote, are "instituted by Divine Intelligence as the categories of His mode of thinking. But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature?" - (Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), 'A quahog is a quahog', Natural History vol LXXXVIII(7), August-September, 1979, pg. 18)
Representative quote miners: The Evolution of a Creationist: Ch. 4, "Missing Links" Are Missing, Stephen E. Jones: Creation/Evolution Quotes: Creation #2: Evidence, and Evolution Is Dead: Divisions In The Organic World
[Editor's note: A more accessible citation for this article is: Gould, Stephen Jay 1980. "A Quahog is a Quahog", The Panda's Thumb. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., pp. 204-13.]
This one is interesting because the dishonesty of the quote mine was exposed at least as far back as 1984 in an article, "Scientific Creationism: The Art of Distortion" by Laurie R. Godfrey that appeared in Science and Creationism (Ashley Montagu, ed. 1984. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 167-81). That was, in turn, a revision of an earlier article, "The Flood of Antievolution" that had appeared in Natural History, vol. 90, no. 6, pp. 4-10. Specifically, Godfrey addressed the use of this quote (along with David Raup's widely mined "120 years after Darwin" quote) by creationist Gary Parker in "Creation, Selection, and Variation," that appeared in the Institute for Creation Research's newsletter, Acts & Facts in 1980 and which is still available.
To better understand Gould's intent, here are the first two paragraphs of the article:
Thomas Henry Huxley once defined science as "organized common sense." Other contemporaries, including the great geologist Charles Lyell, urged an opposing view -- science, they said, must probe behind appearance, often to combat the "obvious" interpretation of phenomena.
I cannot offer any general rules for the resolution of conflicts between common sense and the dictates of a favored theory. Each camp has won its battles and received its lumps. But I do want to tell a story of common sense triumphant -- an interesting story because the theory that seemed to oppose ordinary observation is also correct, for it is the theory of evolution itself. The error that brought evolution into conflict with common sense lies in a false implication commonly drawn from evolutionary theory, not with the theory itself.
Thus, Gould made it plain from the outset that he was discussing something that he does not see as a difficulty in either the theory of evolution or the evidence for it. Immediately after this opening comes the section the quote is mined from:
Common sense dictates that the world of familiar, macroscopic organisms presents itself to us in "packages" called species, All bird watchers and butterfly netters know that they can divide the specimens of any local area into discrete units blessed with those Latin binomials that befuddle the uninitiated. ...
This notion of species as "natural kinds" fit splendidly with creationist tenets of a pre-Darwinian age. Louis Agassiz even argued that species are God's individual thoughts, made incarnate so that we might perceive both His majesty and His message. Species, Agassiz wrote, are "instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking."
But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature? Both Darwin and Lamarck struggled with this question and did not resolve it to their satisfaction. Both denied to the species any status as a natural kind.
Darwin lamented: "We shall have to treat species as ... merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species." Lamarck complained: "In vain do naturalists consume their time in describing new species, in seizing upon every nuance and slight peculiarity to enlarge the immense list of described species.''
Gould then discusses two traditional responses to this seeming dilemma: 1) that the "world of ceaseless flux alters so slowly that configurations of the moment may be treated as static" (i.e. that evolutionary change, though constant, is so slow that species appear to be separate and distinct to ephemeral creatures as ourselves); or 2) to deny (as J.B.S. Haldane did) the reality of species in any context. To these arguments, Gould replies:
Yet common sense continues to proclaim that, with few exceptions, species can be clearly identified in local areas of our modern world. Most biologists, although they may deny the reality of species through geologic time, do affirm their status for the modern moment. As Ernst Mayr, our leading student of species and speciation, writes: "Species are the product of evolution and not of the human mind." Mayr argues that species are "real" units in nature as a result both of their history and the current interaction among their members.
It is clear from this that Gould is not saying, as the creationists would have it, that creationism better explains the evidence. While the "common sense" notion that species are real "natural kinds" is well suited to creationism, there are at least three possible resolutions of the apparent (but not substantial) difficulty with evolutionary theory that arises when it is viewed as requiring constant change. Gould declares himself to be "a partisan of Mayr's view" and proceeds to spend the next five-plus pages discussing non-Western folk taxonomies in support of that position.
When Gould returns to the issue, he states:
But are these Linnaean species, recognized by independent cultures, merely temporary configurations of the moment, mere way stations on evolutionary lineages in continual flux? I argue ... that, contrary to popular belief, evolution does not work this way, and that species have a "reality" through time to match their distinctness at a moment. An average species of fossil invertebrates lives five to ten million years (terrestrial vertebrates have shorter average durations). During this time, they rarely change in any fundamental way. They become extinct, without issue, looking much as they did when they first appeared. ...
Species are stable entities with very brief periods of fuzziness at their origin (although not at their demise because most species disappear cleanly without changing into anything else). As Edmund Burke said in another context: "Though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable."
In short, this is nothing more than Gould expounding on the implications of Punctuated Equilibria for what we should expect to see in the fossil record. To Gould, Mayr's view has the advantage of corresponding with the "common sense" view as to the reality of species, at least after an initial period of fuzziness, while speciation is underway. Of course, creationists are free to quibble with any or all of those resolutions to the issue, as long as they present them fairly. But to use Gould's words, intended merely to set up an apparent dilemma as an introduction to his discourse about the evidence for a particular solution (out of several possibilities) without mentioning those solutions or even their existence, is quote mining at its worst.
Gould closed his article with:
Evolution is a theory of organic change, but it does not imply, as many people assume, that ceaseless flux is the irreducible state of nature and that structure is but a temporary incarnation of the moment. Change is more often a rapid transition between stable states than a continuous transformation at slow and steady rates. We live in a world of structure and legitimate distinction. Species are the units of nature's morphology.
All this and more was noted by Godfrey in her article 20 years ago:
Gould's article is also about problems with Darwinian gradualism. It takes to task those biologists and anthropologists who argue that species boundaries are artifacts of the human capacity to classify, and construct artificial divisions. Gould argues, as Ernst Mayr did years before, that species are real biological entities, but he does not suggest that they are genealogically unrelated to one another or that they cannot give rise to new species.
Gould and his colleagues are widely cited by creationists in their effort to establish that the fossil record documents "no transitions." To creationists this is taken to mean that there are no evolutionary links between "created kinds." But Gould, Eldredge and Stanley are talking about the failure of the fossil record to document fine-scale transitions between pairs of species, and its dramatic documentation of rapid evolutionary bursts involving multiple speciation events -- so-called adaptive radiations. They are not talking about any failure of the fossil record to document the existence of intermediate forms (to the contrary, there are so many intermediates for many well-preserved taxa that it is notoriously difficult to identify true ancestors even when the fossil record is very complete). Nor are Gould, Eldredge, and Stanley talking about any failure of the fossil record to document large-scale trends, which do exist, however jerky they may be. Furthermore, fine-scale transitions are not absent from the fossil record but are merely underrepresented. Eldredge, Gould. and Stanley reason that this is the unsurprising consequence of known mechanisms of speciation. Additionally, certain ecological conditions may favor speciation and rapid evolution, so new taxa may appear abruptly in the fossil record in association with adaptive radiation. Since creationists acknowledge that fine-scale transitions (including those resulting in reproductive isolation) exist and since the fossil record clearly documents large-scale "transitions," it would seem that the creationists have no case. Indeed. they do not. Their case is an artifact of misrepresentation to the lay public of exactly what the fossil record fails to document.
All of this points to the shallowness of creationist use of quotes. In scholarly work, the use of quotations is intended to show an understanding of the relevant literature and is, in effect, a representation on the part of the person using the quote that she or he is intimately familiar with the author's work and positions. Not only are the people using this quote unfamiliar with the article it came from or Gould's work in general, they are even unfamiliar with the literature on the creationism/evolution conflict. Either that . . . or they are just being dishonest.
- John (catshark) Pieret
The first rule of arguing against evolution is not to believe "quotes from evolutionists" taken from creationist websites. These quotes are invariably false and when that falsity is pointed out, the poster looks to be either dishonest or a fool. Secondly, one must remember that science is not determined by dueling quotes, unlike theological debates based upon Scripture.
While I do not expect a reply or a retraction from you in regards to the false quote above, please note that since creationists have been using this tactic for more than three decades, a ready library of refutations to these falsehoods exists on the internet. You might try vetting your quotes before using them from now on.