Stephen Jay Gould

 “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”  (Albert Einstein, 1879—1955)

Stephen Jay Gould died in 2002.  During his lifetime he achieved a status obtained by few other scientists.  In addition to his scholarly work in evolutionary biology, he became one of the most popular science writers of his time.  Gould had national visibility as an expert witness defending evolutionary theory in court and contending with fundamentalists’ intrusion into school science curriculum.  He testified that creationism was religion poorly disguised, masquerading as scientific inquiry. 

Gould defined a relationship that he felt should exist between science and religion.  “Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts.  Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different realm of human purposes, meanings, and values.”  Gould concluded that science and religion must be acknowledged and respected as separate domains, each equally important, neither intruding into the other’s realm.  There is Darwin and there is Job.

Gould’s grandparents fled religious persecution in Eastern Europe.  They began their new lives in the sweatshops of New York.  His father became a middle-class worker and a left-wing political activist.  Gould went on to complete a doctorate in paleontology and became a professor at Harvard.  He was a self-professed skeptic, liberal, agnostic, and a life-long Yankee fan.

In 1988 Gould wrote “The Streak of Streaks,” an essay about his hero, the Yankee Joe DiMaggio who in 1941 hit in 56 consecutive games.  Gould, armed with hard-to-dispute statistics, predicted that DiMaggio’s streak was one record, so improbable, that it is likely never to be broken.

Gould, too, had a streak of his own.  Without a single interruption “for cancer, hell, high water, or the World Series,” he authored 399 consecutive monthly essays for Natural History magazine, an improbable feat, and a record likely never to be broken.

Among scientists Gould is best known for his theory of “punctuated equilibrium.”  Gould argued that life evolved not only from ‘survival of the fittest’, but also by coincidence and dumb luck.  By chance, 65 million years ago, Earth crossed the path of an oncoming meteor and as a result dinosaurs became extinct.  Had Earth and the meteor not been in the same spot at the same time, dinosaurs might have survived.  And if they had survived, they might easily have dominated the smaller, weaker mammals.  But for that random collision of Earth and meteor, intelligent life on earth might have been reptilian.

As one who spent a career writing about chance occurrences, it was ironic that six months prior to his death, Gould wrote about “the most eerie coincidence that I have ever viscerally experienced.”  Gould possessed an English grammar book that his Grandpa Joe carried on the boat, coming into America.  His grandfather, upon arriving at Ellis Island, had written a note in it.  “I have landed.  September 11, 1901.”  Gould was on route to Ellis Island to commemorate his family’s one-hundred-year journey in America on the morning of September 11, 2001.