The Structure of Evolutionary Theory blogging, chapter 2

Booyah! Over 10% of the way through The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Unfortunately, I'm still in heavily exegetical territory. Personally I much prefer Richard Elliott Friedman when it comes to textual interpretation of ancient works, but I knew what I was getting into. In any case, in chapter 2 Stephen Jay Gould mentions the Bible and Shakespeare considerably less, though his verbosity keeps on a truckin'. Instead of an exposition of Gould's own view of evolutionary theory he recapitulates and interprets Charles Darwin's argument in Origin of Species. Now, I read Origin of Species when I was a wee lad, so honestly I don't remember it too well. It seems that all you need from it are the general insights; I don't see the point of pouring over the welter of specific arguments that Darwin marshaled to convince a still partially Creationist intellectual class as to the correctness of evolution as a fact and the primacy of natural selection as the process which drove that fact.¹ Gould is correct that many evolutionary thinkers tend to view Darwin as a saint, and that it can be a bit much. That being said, I'm not sure if it really happens that much in a field such as evolutionary genetics, where the genuflection is notional and symbolic. In The Mating Mind evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller does go back to Darwin's original work in The Descent Of Man And Selection In Relation To Sex to help shape his argument that sexual selection was a primary driver of the our own species' development over time (e.g., the gradual increase in brain size between 2 million years BP and 200,000 years BP). But I think this is an exception to the rule, evolutionary biology is of course a science, and venerable works of one age are simply the bricks buried and forgotten deep in the structure of scientific knowledge. Darwin's looms large because of his cultural significance; to some extent he was a sign of the overthrow of the old religious dispensation. Like Nietzsche or Marx he will remain in the spotlight for centuries because of his historical importance above and beyond what his scientific accomplishments. In The Structure of Evolutionary Theory Stephen Jay Gould in is proposing an alternative path from that of the "orthodox Darwinism" which reaches back to the original founder, and so he must grapple with Darwin as a launching off point. Below, my general impressions....