You're using Evolutionary Logic again so I have to get us back in context.
He doesn't just call the display misleading. He calls the evidence for horse evolution that we teach our kids deplorable, speculative and one of the imaginary stories we have in the textbooks. Then he turns around and says this very same evidence is "a good example" of evolution. Whoops.
Please provide a reference from either the Sunderland or Chase interview where Eldredge says horse evolution is more complicated than what is presented in the display.
The old AMNH display-version of events (which as I will show predates the AMNH display) appeared and for all I know still appears in some textbooks. If so, that's unfortunate since that version of events is wrong. I'm having trouble believing that you can't tell Eldredge criticizing a bad presentation from Eldredge criticizing the actual state of our knowledge.
Everything Eldredge says is right according to the evidence we have now. Just for instance, that nice up-to-date site on The Evolution of the Horse by Deb Bennett of the Smithsonian cites O. C. Marsh of Harvard in the 1870s as "codifying" the linear version of horse evolution which found display at the AMNH. Bennett goes on to say:
The mental image of an evolutionary ladder formed by species which, like rungs, succeed each other in time, gives rise to a number of significant conceptual distortions, the most frequently encountered of which are:You claim that Eldredge is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, one side when he criticizes the horse series and one side when he affirms that the fossil record of horses demonstrates evolution. But when he speaks out of the one side of his mouth he is in agreement with the preponderance of modern authority, as much as he is when he speaks out of the other side of his mouth. He isn't wrong in either case; you're just playing "Twist and Shout" with him.
(1) there is one "main line" of horse evolution, which begins with Eohippus and ends with the one-toed Equus.All four of these ideas are false. Although they are frequently voiced by the public, they also represent scientific viewpoints which were current during this century, some until recently.(2) different horse genera succeed one another through time with little or no overlap, i.e. several different kinds of horses rarely coexisted.
(3) one species gradually evolved into another, so that an "intermediate form" can be expected in every newly-discovered stratigraphic layer.
(4) the reason that Eohippus and other early forms existed was in order to evolve into Equus, i.e. the existence of the presently living form was pre-directed or predestined.
Eldredge does not disagree with modern mainstream science. Neither side of his mouth is wrong. You show me where he takes a position that I would not personally agree with and I'll admit he's wrong.