The Hedgehog, the Fox & the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science & the Humanities

by Stephen Jay Gould

In his ?nal book and his ?rst full-length original title since Full House in 1996, the eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long. In building his case, Gould shows why the common assumption of an inescapable conflict between science and the humanities is false, mounts a spirited rebuttal to the ideas that his intellectual rival E. O. Wilson set forth in his book Consilience , and explains why the pursuit of knowledge must always operate upon the bedrock of nature’s randomness. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox is a controversial discourse, rich with facts and observations gathered by one of the most erudite minds of our time.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Biology, Essays, Evolution

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Stephen Jay Gould was a prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Most of Gould's empirical research was on land snails. Gould helped develop the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which evolutionary stability is marked by instances of rapid change. He contributed to evolutionary developmental biology. In evolutionary theory, he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans, and evolutionary psychology. He campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two compatible, complementary fields, or "magisteria," whose authority does not overlap.

Many of Gould's essays were reprinted in collected volumes, such as Ever Since Darwin and The Panda's Thumb, while his popular treatises included books such as The Mismeasure of Man, Wonderful Life and Full House.
-Wikipedia

Reviews

[E S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Being dead shouldn't exempt Gould from editing.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a very up-and-down experience with this book where certain parts fascinated me immensely and others felt like suffering until the next chapter. Gould's first step in mending the gap between the sciences and humanities revolves around establishing mutual respect for both approaches to knowledge and appreciating what types of knowledge each is suited for (observation and empiricism being largely suited to the harder sciences; ethics, morals, culture/art being better studied by the humanities). He goes to great lengths to outline the process of reductionism and the urge to synthesize complex systems under broad theories/definitions. He does a great job tracing the history of the "two cultures", as well as debunking the myth of theology vs. science as being necessarily in opposition. The more he mentioned the hedgehog and fox analogy, the more muddled I thought it became--I am still undecided if this was because I felt I was being beat over the head with it or because Gould had additional points to which my lesser brain was oblivious.

[Pavlogreen]

Stephen J. Gould es un referente.

No solo por su gran trabajo científico, sino por su encomiable capacidad divulgadora, su estilo grácil y lleno de humor y su erudición interdisciplinar. Es el tipo de académico al que deberíamos aspirar y además era buen tipo y defensor de causas justas.

En este libro hace un repaso histórico y presente al conflicto entre ciencias y humanidades y aboga por una adecuada amistad entre ambos estilos de razonamiento y conocimiento humano, que juntos y a veces revueltos permiten logros indiscutibles. Además critica los intentos de unificación totalitaria basados en que las ciencias absorban a las humanidades y nos recuerda la fragilidad y contingencia histórica de toda forma de conocimiento, por potente que parezca con nuestras lentes actuales.

Hay que leer libros como este.

[max · Rating 3 out of 5]

While an entertaining read throughout, Gould's final book heats up when he takes on E. O. Wilson's take on consilience, a term coined by William Whewell, an obscure 19th-century English polymath, to refer to a particular kind of scientific induction that does not rely on reductionism.

According to Gould, the sciences and humanities represent distinct ways of knowing, and distinct modes of inquiry. Scientific inquiry will never successfully reduce the humanities into constituent parts that are neatly made up of fundamental sciences such as physics and chemistry. He uses Whewell's elaboration of consilience to attack Wilson and differentiate himself from scientists who hope to one day subsume the humanities. Gould does not spare non-scientists, however, and chides them for not taking full advantage of scientific developments as an aid to problems in philosophy, history, mathematics, literature, and art.

Gould's book also includes many other fine moments derived from his lectures and other books, from which he excerpts liberally. In particular, his discussion of the ancients versus the moderns in Swift's time does a fine job of introducing Swift's famous "sweetness and light" quip to a new generation of academic partisans.

While hardly a timeless classic, and certainly an unfinished manuscript, this book showcases the tremendous breadth of Gould's thinking and suggests what was lost with his death.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gould presents his position that people (presumably academicians are the guilty parties here) in the two currently opposing camps of Science and Humanities have a lot to learn from each other and that everyone would benefit if they would only cooperate rather than seek to delegitimize each other's way of thinking. Being a scientist, he places most of the present-day blame on his own colleagues but grants that it can trace its origins to the oppression of science in the early days of the Enlightenment. Much of the latter part of the book is focused on critique of E. O. Wilson's book, Consilience..., which champions a reductionist scientific view as the best method for the furthering of human knowledge.
Gould makes many good points although I feel like he concedes a little too much legitimacy to Religion.
His writing style here is his usual: while not exactly flowery it is always feels forced to me, with a too-clever-by-half complexity that is revealed instantly if one tries reading it out loud. Natural, it ain't. He casts aspersions on the typical lackluster writing style so common among his scientific colleagues and rightly so. But I think his style is flawed in equal magnitude though in a different way. Pinker, Dawkins and E.O. Wilson himself are all much better literary stylists.

[Lukas Szrot · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a student of sociology of scientific knowledge I stand on the precipice, in the midst of an ongoing debate about whether sociology should be a quantitative (a la the natural sciences) or qualitative (more like the humanities) endeavor. I wonder, 'don't we need both, and for different reasons?'

I found this book interesting because I am also reading Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea". On a side note, it was a great way to brush up on some Latin, and a reiteration in some ways of the Non-Overlapping Magisteria thesis appearing in other works like 'Rocks of Ages'. there is this 'realist versus relativist' debate and the old 'science and religion' relationship which are both central to SSK as heated issues in which the public has become heavily involved. I really appreciate that this book took on some different, lesser-known but highly illuminating perspectives, rather than starting the discussion with a well-worn caricature of Galileo and the Church.

Thank you, Stephen Jay Gould, for providing the framework for a tractable middle ground between the narrow positivism growing in popularity among natural scientists and the postmodern irrationalism that has become fashionable in the humanities. You are missed.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tiny little bit too much Gould. Although I like it that he seems to get his pleasure in displaying his knowledge. And his books. He knows Latin and German. Well, not that he knows how to spell schwarz. The hedgehog fox metaphor (from Isiah Berlin) I do not really get. Okay, the hedgehog does know only one trick. But very efficient. Is this science or humanities?
He talks about Snow, the invention of the flat earth. There is no war between humanities and science since one party (science) does not show up. Meaning they are not interested and do not know about any conflict.
A large part of the book is directed against Wilson (nice anecdote about someone pouring water on AW. SJG says he regretted that he did not use violence at the occasion.)
I will try to remember the name Konrad Gessner. The censor of Gessner’s work on animals (everything about pigs e.g.) He crosses out every occurrence of Erasmus. Misses one though, where he talks about the hedgehog/fox. Nice, but too arty.

[Tomomi Landsman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book at Second Story Books in Washington DC.

I usually love Stephen Jay Gould's books, but I just couldn't get into this one. I can't tell if this is because of the lack of editing by Gould himself, the topic, or the writing coming late in Gould's life, but my eyes just glazed over for the vast majority of the book. I enjoyed the essays in the middle that were reprinted from previous works, but I just didn't understand the overarching thesis for this book.

On the other hand, I enjoyed the Note to the Reader at the beginning of the book as so many times I think to myself (and say to other people) how I wish Gould were alive today. Not just so I could read more popular science on more current topics written in his clever prose, but because we need his measured voice and knowledge in our current polemical climate.

I don't think I'll revisit this book again, but I'm glad I read it once.

Edit: Well, I read it again, and I enjoyed it quite a bit more this time.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

GOULD'S FINAL BOOK---A PASSIONATE ARGUMENT FOR RESPECTING BOTH SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES

Stephen Jay Gould wrote in the first chapter of this posthumously-published 2003 book, "This book takes an idiosyncratic, but basically historical, approach to the supposed conflict between science and the humanities by admitting the appropriateness, even the inevitability, of struggle at the birth pangs of modern science, but then arguing that we got stuck, centuries ago, in this superannuated assumption of inherent struggle, when no legitimate rationale... supports its continuation. Rather, in our increasingly complex and confusing world, we need all the help we can get from each distinct domain of our emotional and intellectual being... this inevitable and initial estrangement between science and the humanities... became both silly and harmful long ago.

"Science triumphed in those broad areas rightly belonging to its techniques and expertise. On the other hand, science has no business contending for intellectual turf outside the limits of its stunningly successful methods. Thus the time for peace arrived long ago---and peace would bring such blessing and benefits to both perceived sides, as each has so much to learn from the success of the other... we can identify a right and a wrong way to achieve a proper healing of our age-old conflict between science and humanities. This proper path stresses respect for preciously different insights... and rejects the language (and practice) of hierarchical worth and subsumption." (Pg. 19-20)

The curious title of the book is explained: "The fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows one great and effective strategy" (Pg. 2) He explains, "I use the fox and hedgehog as my model for how the sciences and humanities should interact because I believe that neither pure strategy can work, but that a fruitful union of these seemingly polar opposites can, with goodwill and significant self-restraint on both sides, be conjoined into a diverse but common enterprise of unity and power. The way of the hedgehog cannot suffice because the sciences and humanities... do different things, each equally essential to human wholeness.

"We need this wholeness above all, but cannot achieve the goal by shearing off the legitimate differences... that make our lives so ... complex. But if we lose sight of the one overarching goal---the hedgehog's insight---underneath the legitimately different concerns and approaches of these two great ways, then we are truly defeated... But the way of the fox cannot prevail either, because too great a flexibility may lead to survival of no enduring value." (Pg. 5-6)

He criticizes "creation scientists" who explain the fossil record as "the product of a single event that occurred during the few thousand years of allotted biblical time and left a paleontological record ordered not by the millions of years needed to evolve new species from their predecessors, but only in the few years required to deposit all fossils in order of their density---a patent empirical absurdity since some of the lightest and most delicate fossils occur in the oldest strata, while many massive forms (mammoth teeth and bones for starters) can only be found at the top of the stratigraphic pile." (Pg. 27)

He observes, "Even the canonical tale of Galileo's forced recantation in 1633 cannot stand as an episode between science and faith. Urban VIII remains a villain, and Galileo a hero, in my book, but Galileo was also a frightfully undiplomatic hothead who brought unnecessary trouble upon his own head. He had, after all, received an official imprimatur for publishing his book on Ptolemy versus Copernicus. Church authorities only required that he present an 'honest' debate between the two sides, and that he depicted heliocentrism as a mathematical hypothesis rather than as empirical truth... If Galileo had so proceeded, the Copernican view would have triumphed by the inherent character of its superior arguments. Instead, Galileo couldn't resist his urge to ridicule the Ptolemaic opposition by awarding the defense of this position to a character named Simplicio, and by providing him with arguments that matched his name in acumen. No monolithic 'church' condemned Galileo, and the considerable cadre of ecclesiastical scientists mostly deplored... the fate of a dear colleague..." (Pg. 88-89)

He recalls, "If I may ... admit an embarrassing example from my very first publication, I wrote an essay on uniformitarianism in geology... I had learned from day one of my first course in geology that the 'bad guys' of the early nineteenth century... were known (boo, hiss) as 'catastrophists,' were unscientific theological apologists who argued for paroxysmal geological change at global scale because they dogmatically accepted both the efficacy of miracles and the six-thousand-year literal chronology of Genesis. But I read and read, and never found a hint of affirmation for either claim. Rather, all leading catastrophists seemed to agree with the uniformitarians about an ancient earth. They also shunned miracles as outside the course of natural law, and therefore incapable of scientific explanation. In fact the catastrophists seemed to be making the theoretically honorable (if factually dubious) point that geological dynamics ... had been primarily paroxysmal but entirely natural---rather than gradual and accumulative as the uniformitarians favored." (Pg. 96)

He suggests, "what about all the so-called 'junk DNA'? Some may exist for truly random reasons unrelated to natural selection... Other components of 'junk' may have utilities as yet unimagined, and perhaps at emergent levels not yet understood in the embryology of bodies." (Pg. 231-232)

Besides being a highly creative evolutionary theorist, Gould was also a brilliant writer and an engaged "public intellectual." His presence is sorely missed on the scientific and literary scene.\

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of Gould's last books, full of logorrheic musings on the relationship between science and the humanities. He says that science is not an enemy of religion, not an enemy of "science studies", not an enemy of art, and the people who make the opposite impression are marginal radicals; C. P. Snow's famous essay on the two cultures overgeneralizes a parochial British situation; Vladimir Nabokov was a competent lepidopterist and Ernst Haeckel a great art nouveau illustrator.

[Zachary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gould has a good point in this book about the separation and mutual value of science and the humanities, but it sadly gets lost in the verbiage. Here Gould is at his worst, showing off translation skills, bragging about his book collection, and generally being an obnoxious know-it-all in love with his own language. I love Gould, but this is not a good book.

[Justin Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a 2.5 (a 2?), but, as my first Gould in years, I can't help but have been charmed by his doddery & genial professor prose.

Framing the titular gap with a short genealogy of modern science and its formation against the backdrop of (and against as a reaction to) Renaissance humanism, Gould builds his way up to his central target: EO Wilson's then contemporary book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge which Gould claims expresses a scientist's chauvinism (not his words) to everything not within his own field. Instead of the false binary of scientists vs. humanists, hedgehogs (specialists) vs. foxes (generalists), each should work as a hybrid (foxhog? hedghefox?). Gould's best example is the American painter Abbott Handerson Thayer's contribution to the understanding of how countershading functioned in animal camouflage because of skills learned from painting. Then concludes the book with a heavily theoretical 70-page discussion of the titular concept of "consilience," by sharp contrast.

What caught my eye was a longform anecdote about a public debate regarding Wilson's theory of sociobiology during which Wilson is called a racist and has water poured on him by a group of student activists. Gould's response is to invokes Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder" against them before defending sociobiology, saying it couldn't spread racism because "the pseudoscientific substrate for racism" is "the causes of geographic based variation" and not "putative human universals." Perhaps more so now, but I feel that even back then this is a bizarre claim. Especially from the same author who wrote The Mismeasure of Man, a work specifically against race science from my current understanding. This is not to impute sociobiology so much as his method of defending it though.

This is the first book in a while that's made me realize how old and prematurely tired I am. Contextualize this book as 4 years after Toni Morrison was asked in two separate times whether she "can [imagine] writing a novel not centered around race?" and whether she'd incorporate white characters into her works"in a substantial way." 8 years after the infamously racist The Bell Curve, '94 Crime Bill, and Hilary Clinton describing Black people as "superpredators." It boggles the mind that we're here and it boggles the mind that one could protest fairly obvious ideas about how bias can effect analysis. Wtf is history.

To come back to Gould. It's clear he wanted to referee the conversation "between the sciences and the humanities" by saying it's a vestigial conversation from a time when the distinction had social value, in this way positioning himself as an Aristotelian moderate/modernizer. It doesn't work. Even his transformation of Wilson's "consilience of reductivism" into one of "equal regard," where the two domains "acknowledges the comparable but distinct worthiness" instead of one being subsumed under the other, reveals the fundamental conflict in taking up this centrist stance: how can there be conversation between sides that don't acknowledge each other's worthiness? Wilson definitionally sees the sciences as the suzerain of the humanities.

Funnily enough, more than ever before, it feels like a moot distinction. Computers paint paintings and bacteria are poems. Meanwhile there's still chauvinism about how diverse ways of knowing and experiencing can meaningfully develop scientific study, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants being just such a work emphasizing this diversity.

There's space here for an interesting discussion of how bureaucracy, Enlightenment rationale

[Lakmus · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a grad student, this feels like listening to the ramblings of your scientist grandpa - partially entertaining from all the obscure anecdotes and grouchy ranting about that science life, partially leaving me scrunching my head over what exactly is he driving at.

I'll cut Gould some slack here, because dying is a valid excuse in my books, but the book really needs a second draft – or an editor doing so much reworking they should be counted as a second author. Some things could have been simply cut out, but I think the general points Gould is making are somewhat funkily arranged and while the metaphor of the hedgehog and the fox has been worked in pretty consistently, the whole thing with the magister's pox is more of an author's curious aside. I am also not entirely sure who this whole thing is for – using multiple methods and approaches to scholarship good, pedantism and censure bad – I mean, no shit?

I am also not sure his examples of science being useful to humanities and humanities being useful to science are that great or demonstrative? Edgar Allan Poe translating some French science texts to publish a more comprehensive mollusk textbook together with some other guys is not really an example of humanities helping science I think (?) – it's just being thorough about information sources. Conversely, Nabokov scholars ignoring what he said about him using moth and butterfly metaphors isn't them ignoring science, it's just cherry-picking sources – it has nothing to do with butterfly research per se?

There was an interesting point about science texts typically avoiding stylistic flair, except when not, but I am not sure Gould is entirely accurate here either – technical texts from the humanities, as few of them as I have seen, are not particularly riveting either. There is a difference between technical publications, broader theoretical works, and popular writing for a lay audience – perhaps things are different in paleontology, but over here in the human sciences it is typical to use dry cut-and-paste formulations for research papers, the methods and the results especially, with more humane writing styles used in many theoretical papers (where the goal is more to convince the audience, rather than lay out some findings), and even more so in popular science books. The results vary, of course, but I not entirely sure the scientists are the only ones at fault here. Modern English overall seems to bend towards simpler, plainer prose, rather than twisty flourishes of the 18-19th centuries.

He talks about consilience a lot, which is a nice term (thanks Whewell) basically referring to cases where a coherent theory is arrived at via insight, rather than progressive experimentation – there was a long ramble about it, and reducationism, but at the end of the day – it's a descriptive term for how some kinds of progress in some cases is/was made. Sometimes experimentation is not a viable method and other methods should be used (until the time when you hopefully have enough understanding of the subject to run experiments, like we are now doing with study of evolution) – again, no shit? Who needs to be persuaded of this?

[Cbx · Rating 3 out of 5]

The points made in this book are excellent ones: the sciences and the humanities can learn from each other, there are different methods of approaching problems that are equally valid, and reductionism is not the answer. The historical stories told to illustrate these points are enjoyable and informative, highlighting characters and corners of the past of which I at least was unaware. The style is also enjoyable, methodical, and erudite, with many footnotes providing additional context.
All that said, the introduction states that this was a book-length extension of a talk the author gave. It also states that the book was not complete when the author died, and was not edited further after his death. Boy do both of those things show - this is one of those cases where many words were used where less words would have sufficed. As for the editing choice, it was reasonable enough to not try and adjust the facts the author presented, but a copy-editing pass could have been done to at least catch things like a typo in a reference to the author's own previous book. I also thought the book was really let down by the choice to provide the figures in black and white on the same paper as the rest of the text. This is even something the author mentions, that this choice was made for cost reasons, but these are detailed images with small text and color, and the reproductions are of very poor quality. In addition, some of them have odd grey horizontal bars over sections of them, which look to be image rendering issues, as though the image had not fully loaded at the time of printing. It would have been so much nicer to have had these as full-color inserts on glossy paper, where one could have actually seen and appreciated all the detail referred to in the text.

[Tyler Horton · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting but somewhat less than fully satisfying book.

As always with Gould, one of the highlights is his distinctive writing voice but here he seems to have let himself get carried away. There are parenthetic interruptions on nearly every page and I found myself skipping them as I got further in. Some of the sentences are artful to the point that they verge on insufferable.

To my mind, the best contributions are the full takedown of 'dichotomy' and the chastising of any scientific claims to get at what 'ought to be' rather than merely what 'is'. There is also a short section on reading papers and presenting in the humanities which is delightful.

I latched on to two of his major talking points. The first is an historical demonstration that the science and the humanities were never meant to be enemies. There was some enlightening material here that was well presented. Second is a push back against Wilson's claim that the way science and the humanities work together, is by the humanities realizing that they are products of the processes and forces that the physical sciences investigate. For Gould, it is necessary to keep these two fields apart so that they can be properly brought together later on. Further, each field is limited to a certain set of questions which it can reasonably pursue. The way they come together is mostly in setting out their results, after the work is done, and looking for ways that they can speak to one another.

I have a sense that this is a better book for scientists than for those in the humanities. It makes sense, due to science being Gould's field, but he seems to have much more to say to scientists than to the humanities.

[Noel Cisneros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ha habido un enfrentamiento entre la ciencia (sobre todo la ciencia dura) y las humanidades desde que el surgimiento de la ciencia como la conocemos en la actualidad (en Europa en torno al siglo XVI y XVII) --enfrentamiento que se ha introducido también las llamadas humanidades, donde desde las ciencias sociales se ve con suspicacia a las artes--. Gould en este libro analiza este conflicto, para lo cual se sirve de un análisis historiográfico (una herramienta de las humanidades) y plantea que son ministerios separados, que siendo ambas parte del ámbito del conocimiento humano ninguna es superior a la otra y no tienen porque supeditarse entre sí, en una postura por demás conciliadora --de un pensador que dedicó gran parte de su obra a la conciliación y al cuestionamiento; además de su labor como paleontólogo--.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

As expected, Gould provides an logical and well-written consideration of the common ground between science and humanities. He uses humanities-based reasoning to support science and foundational science to sure up the need for humanities to better the human condition. His lengthy comparison of science and the humanities through their parable-sourced fox and hedgehog provides a whimsical and wonderful vehicle to understand the necessary reliance of one on the other and the inevitable failure of one without the other.

Especially after this past year of trying to destroy science and the humanities, this book holds up well for its age. I enjoyed Gould's challenges to E. O. Wilson, but did not support all of them. It anything, they encouraged me to revisit more of Wilson's writing this year.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a response to Edward O Wilson's Consilience, which was a much better book. Although I disagree with Gould's thesis, especially how he clings to the statement that Science and Religion are completely compatible, which he dismissively states that he "proved" in an early work, I did find the historical tales that he cites as evidence to be entertaining and informative.

The reader should approach the book as a collection of historical episodes illustrating the conflict between Religion, Humanities, and Science, but the philosophy attempting to glue it together is bunk.

[Tim Timberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book Gould traces the history of the relationship between the humanities and science. At the end, he offered his view of how both areas should work together, using their different skill sets, for a common goal of increasing knowledge. At times the book was a bit too abstract for me, at least for the time I had to put into it. Still, Gould was at times fun to read. His word choice alone makes the reader feel smarter.

[Garth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gould wrote much like he talked. His prose is dense with parenthetical asides, long footnotes, obscure references, and humorous anecdotes that occurred to him at the time. If you're not used to all that, it can take you a couple of chapters to get in the groove. It's worth the effort, although I imagine his editors double-dosed on Rolaids when he submitted a manuscript. Be prepared.

[Pablo]

El último capítulo - un magnífico ensayo contra el reduccionismo de EO Wilson - ya justifica el libro, pero en esta relectura merece la pena detenerse en la creación del mito dicotómico (esto es, ciencias vs humanidades) desde Snow, a modo de actualidad y constructo ideológico, hasta, en plena remontada, Bacon.

[Raymond Nakamura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful argument for the keeping the different goals and strengths of science and the humanities rather than attempting to mush them all together as E O Wilson suggested in Consilience.

[tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

sjg's take on the science/humanities divide, kind of. flawed but at times very engaging. gould passed away before he had the chance to proof this book and unfortunately it shows.

[Jeel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Dick Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

a slow read

[Nik · Rating 3 out of 5]

The number 2 is a very dangerous number ... Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion.

[Emerson Harman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Gould's books but this one was tough for me to get through

[Melanie Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this year’s ago in a bookshop in Hay on Wye, and then felt somehow intimidated by it for over a decade.

In hindsight this was probably not the right book of Gould’s to start with - it’s his last and suffers from not having been fully finished/edited by him. The most successful sections were towards the end, where he argues with Wilson about consilience and reductionism, and I enjoyed the novelty of the various anecdotes and digressions. But it also felt a bit meandering and just generally harder work than it should have been.

[Rory Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is rightly remembered as one of the leading communicators of scientific ideas and this book is no exception. It focuses upon the relationship of Science and Humanities, arguing that there is no inherent reason for them to be in conflict.

The book is erudite with a wealth of examples and anecdotes: possibly, occasionally too many. Nevertheless, the thesis is simple. It presents historical arguments to show that there is no inherent conflict between Science and Humanities, and then a Philosophical conclusion to show that they ought not to be in conflict.

The author showed that the earliest historical disagreements between Scientists and Humanists were not actually about Science or Humanities at all. Experimental science originated during the renaissance, when established academics were focused upon trying to retrieve the lost wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome. Working with an assumption that everything worth knowing had already been discovered by the Greeks and Romans, they looked upon Science as a self-indulgent waste of time and resources.

Once the arguments began, issues of dogma and philosophy did indeed arise, but again there was no need for them to come into conflict. At least some of Galileo’s difficulties were caused by the fact that he was a “frightfully undiplomatic hothead” (Loc 1336). In more recent times, Scientific Positivists tried to claim that Science was objective (and therefore preferable) while Humanities were just subjective opinions. But again this wasn’t a real disagreement because it was an “arrogant” and “cardboard” version of Science which was easily shown to be wrong by writers like Thomas Kuhn (Loc 1804).

Not only are Science and Humanities not intrinsically in conflict, but the author believed that they shouldn’t be in conflict. Pragmatically, both disciplines can learn from each other. Humanities can help Sciences communicate ideas better, and the Sciences can help Humanities represent their ideas better.

But the author thought that there is a much stronger reason for them not to be in conflict. Science and Humanities are dealing with totally different questions. Science deals with descriptions, and Humanities deals with interpretations (Loc 1319). This grounded the author’s view that the disciplines are non-overlapping magisteria, each autonomous in its own specific aspect of addressing factual descriptions (Science), or values, interpretations and implications (Humanities).
As the subjects are non-overlapping in their focus, then they cannot be in conflict.

This idea leads to the author’s vision of Consilience, which is a uniting of Science and Humanities. It achieves this unity through avoiding the temptations of reductionism, by treating each as a separate partner in a joint enterprise of seeking knowledge and wisdom.

This idea seems initially attractive, but it encounters two significant problems. Firstly, the model of non-overlapping magisteria seems to collapse back into a distinction between the Objective Science of descriptions vs the Subjective Humanities of interpretations. And that is a model which the author has already dismissed as a flawed (arrogant, cardboard) model of science.

More significantly, it is far from clear that Science and Humanities can be non-overlapping. Descriptive facts might not entail specific values and moral obligations, but religions, ethics and spirituality cannot be entirely divorced from all ‘facts,’ otherwise they become irrational superstitions. Ultimately, it is difficult to escape an area of intersection where humanities subjects depend on at least some facts about the world to drive their interpretations; and where Sciences are using interpretations as theories to drive their observations. The idea of non-overlapping magisteria doesn’t really solve the problem of conflict between Science and Humanities, it just rephrases the terms of the problem.

Overall, this is a thought provoking book which repays careful reading, regardless of whether you agree with the author’s conclusions.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: Science vs. the humanities in a shrugfest
Gould, while touching briefly on the more headline-grabbing battle between science and religion (which he has apparently tackled in full elsewhere), takes on the science vs. humanities here. My suspicion is that the lack of crackling urgency the topic seems to have today is dependent on two key factors:

1). Science has won! We are all materialists, we are all reductionists; even if we are not all scientists, we see the fruit of science in the technology that dominates our lives today in so many ways--computing in the workplace, pervasive entertainment convergence technology in the home, mobile communications everywhere, once miraculous medical treatments and pharmaceuticals everyday. We even recognize, whether or not explicitly as materialists, that the brain is at the very least a powerful machine driving the mind, which perhaps serves as its operating system which enables us to think, live, create, all those things under the umbrella of the humanities.

2). To a large extent, the division is and has always been an academic one. People living in the real world read, right, watch, admire, create live, in the humanities, while recognizing the value, impact, and reductionist/materialist rightness of science in its proper place. We know the world "works", we need not know or even think about it that hard. Perhaps we are too cavalier in our ignorance of the sciences, but a case could also be made that to the average non-thinking person, even the humanities are a distant land too seldom visited, so why the hub-bub?

Gould's point in this book, which based on these factors seems more dated than the 10 years since its publication, is that science is like the hedgehog, a ":simple-minded" creature in that its only method of self-defense is to curl into ball to surround its soft internal organs with its prickly covering. On the other hand, humanities are like the "wily" fox, with many methods of defense or escape which he crafts to the occasion. Gould calls for both approaches to action to resolve the dilemmas facing the sciences and the humanities, in other words, the world today. He doesn't call for convergence on scientific materialism to resolve problems which is outside the "magisterium" (or realm) of science, such as questions of origin (although Gould reveals a strong bias by condemning Christians who believe the Biblical creation account), morals, ethics, politics , and religion. Rather, he suggests that scientists use the fox's range of methods by becoming well-read and thinking holistically to approach problems that can not be simply addressed through materialism, and that humanists adopted the hedgehog's scientific method to resolve problems in its magisterium when those problems are really amenable to materialism. He also calls for the wisdom to know when.

Gould uses the Magister's Pox of his title as a warning of the inability to solve this conflict by force--in this example the censorship (pox) attempted by the Catholic church to erase the nascent scientists names (not even their ideas, just their names) from a 17th century volume in Gould's personal library. The effort, besides being wrong-minded, turns out to be impossible, in Gould's interesting example.

So the battle may no longer be in full fight, but Gould's reminder still has an impact.