Gould was obviously bitter at the way Creationists had misconstrued his words. Gould was PRETENDING to be bitter at the way creationists were quoting him, and they were quoting him correctly. In real life, there is a terribly easy way to avoid being quoted as having said something:
DON'T SAY IT!!!!!
varmintman:
"Gould was PRETENDING to be bitter at the way creationists were quoting him, and they were quoting him correctly." First, curiously, I'd never even heard the term "Quote Mining" until you used it in post #161 above, but I see now that it is common practice among Creationists, and has been complained of for many years:
"Their [Creationists'] favorite sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists.
Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really antievolutionists under the skin."
--Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote in his famous 1973 essay "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution"
Second, your claim that Gould lied and was only "PRETENDING to be bitter" is beyond ridiculous since:
- You can't read Gould's mind, and
- There's no logic to "PRETENDING" bitterness.
- Your claim has nothing to do with the merits of Gould's case for evolution's punctuated equilibrium.
Gould intended his idea of "Punctuated Equilibrium" precisely to explain that dearth (but not total absence) of "transitional fossils" (quoting from your post #144):
"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." Gould from Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127
Gould writing in May 1981:
"...transitions are often found in the fossil record.
Preserved transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution... but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim."
In the first quote, Gould is making the case for
punctuated equilibrium, and in the second he is responding to misrepresentations of his arguments -- to Quote Mining by Creationists.
The obvious truth of the matter is that every fossil is transitional between its ancestors and descendants, and that much of the alleged "stasis" is simply our inability to read the DNAs of bones long since turned to rock.
We simply can't say for certain, just by looking at fossils, whether two similar looking creatures were of sub-species which could interbreed, or of separate species which could not.
If they were separate species, then much of the alleged "stasis" disappears, and what we really see is just the results of relatively stable environment.
When an environment doesn't change much, then neither do creatures which inhabit it.