Dr. Stephen Jay Gould is one of the most well-known and highly decorated scientists of our age. Gould delivers a remarkable lecture filled with wit, charm, and historical anecdote. He traces the history of western culture’s uneasy relationship with the pedestal-shattering discoveries of science. This is one of the best lectures in the history of the Skeptics Society’s Distinguished Science Lecture Series!
After an A.B. from Antioch College and a Ph.D. from Columbia, Gould began his teaching career at Harvard. He won the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship, was named “Scientist of the Year” by Discover magazine for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, was named Humanist Laureate by the Academy of Humanism, was awarded 41 honorary degrees, was voted a member of the National Academy of Science, and he most recently served a term as President of the AAAS. He has written 22 books (receiving a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award) and over 900 articles and essays. Given Gould’s admiration for Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, perhaps Gould’s most significant accomplishment is writing 300 consecutive monthly essays in Natural History magazine. He retires from his essay streak just in time to celebrate the second (and actual) end of the millennium which, according to Gould in his Questioning the Millennium, is a precisely arbitrary date. Our congratulations to Gould on his remarkable and DiMagical feat.
This lecture was recorded on October 7, 2000 as part of the Distinguished Science Lecture Series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society in California (1992–2015).
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