I am at work in a law office, so I don't have the time nor the resources to sit down and discuss "punctuated equilibrium" versus gradual evolution over time. Even if I did have the time, I am not equipped to discuss it at the same intellectual level as you probably expect I would.(or as he could)
I did graduate level work in the field of Primatology, but was not able to complete the Masters thesis due to personal demands- - -raising a two-year-old by myself and working full-time. My work was concerned with environmental and nutritional deficits and stresses on Hamadryas baboon populations in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. I worked with Clifford Jolly at NY University and examined hair samples he collected from these populations to detect the effects of stress in the samples divided by age and gender.
In any event, I am better able to discuss comparative primate anatomical/morphological development than to try to elucidate the inner workings of the mind of Stephen Jay Gould for which I have the utmost respect ( and envy.)
I'm not aware of any reason to respect or envy idiots.
It really bothers me when people call others names because they quote what they had previously said. The Clintonites would do that all the time. Of course Orwell also pointed out the evils of such practices. Essentially calling people names for quoting them is a dictatorial practice. Well, calling people names by itself is totally uncivilized behavior in the first place. It is a form of avoiding discussion in a very dishonest way. Let's see one often quoted statement of Gould's 'hijacked' by the opponents of evolution:
STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." Natural History, V.86."
Now what's the problem with quoting the above? No one argues that he did not say it. Are they arguing that he did not mean it? If he did not mean it, then why did he say it? It cannot be said that the above is not in accordance with his beliefs and his subsequent theories since clearly the lack of intermediate fossils which he talks about there, the lack of fossils prior to the whole Cambrian explosion in fact, is the reason why he broke with the Darwinists and made up the theory of punctuated equilibrium. So why should one not quote what he said there?
The real question that must be asked of Gould, is whether he was lying then or is he lying now, or perhaps is he lying all the time and he wishes to have his previous words put into the Orwellian memory hole so that he can keep on lying tomorrow.