The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox: Mending and Minding the Misconceived Gap Between Science and the Humanities [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

One thing to make clear first - the manuscript for this book was written just before the author's death. It was published un-altered, and I suspect that the author would have taken a couple of iterations with an editor before committing it to print.

Gould's argumnet here is, bascially, that the physical sciences and the social sciences need to get it together a bit more. By sharing techniques across disciplines, we get arrive at much more insightful solutions.

I couldn't agree more.

But Gould seems to choose some odd examples throughout the book to demonstrate this point, which, I feel, don't fit the argument too well.

And the style of the writing is rich but rambling - it would sound good if delivered as spoken word in mad scientist lecture format, but in the written word it's a chore.

Gould begins claiming that historians label the 17th Century as "The Scientific Revolution", when most scholars apply the broader "The Enlightenment" to that era. Having begun on a false note, Gould then builds a dichotomy using a succession of writers, many lost to sight today. That, of course, was Gould's specialty - the restoration of forgotten literary, philosophical or scientific figures. He calls upon this phalanx to show how science and the humanities have diverged. Science, "the upstart" competed for pride of place against the "long-established" studies of the humanities. Science, the "hedgehog" with its narrow focus on facts, eschewed the sweeping assertions of the humanities - the "fox". Over the centuries, the divergence grew as the objective pursuit of evidence proved ill-adapted in philosophical studies. Gould repeatedly notes that many early scientists were theologians, merging his two "magisteria" of science and religion [He ignores the fact that education of any type remained in the hands of churches, Roman Catholic or Protestant until very recently].

Although he offers a feeble statement of intent at the opening of the book, it is well into the text before we are confronted with the book's purpose. That, simply stated, is another assault on the father of sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson. Gould attempts to invalidate the thesis of Wilson's book "Consilience" in which he urged that science and the humanities must merge. Wilson's argument rests on the idea that science's methodology will inevitably demonstrate its usefulness to the humanities. The two will come together in a "new science of the humanities" with both sacrificing some elements while adopting others across disciplines. Gould offers a largesse of faint praise to Wilson's ambitious effort, but in the last analysis simply declares he can't agree with Wilson's proposal. His disagreement rests, as it has for a generation, on his failure to accept evolutionary roots for human thinking and behaviour. The research achieved during that generation is loftily ignored. "Separate but equal" was Gould's aim. He's offered the rationale before - science and the humanities can operate in harness - "e plurbus unum" [of course!] but retain separate identities. He leaves to others how to bring this coalition of the willing about. It's a shame this final statement of a fine writer exhibits such a paucity of reasoned viewpoint. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

It's difficult to put my finger on what I don't like about this book. It isn't easy to read: the prose is verbose, showy and often disjointed. Much of it is lifted from earlier essays he wrote on the subject, the reunion of the sciences with the humanities. Actually, the book is turgid and uninteresting and for something that Gould was so interested in, it lacks passion.

I also think Gould got his subject wrong. I think he did because he carried with him all sorts of cultural biases which he would wear proudly, rather than subsuming. In many ways this is a political book, stating a case for the cultural determination of science, an extension of Gould's fight with E O Wilson and his sociobiology. I think Gould was wrong in this fight and was not honest with himself about it.

The other problem is that the book is not finished. Or at least it feels like it has ragged edges and there are some embarrassing - to me at least - bits where Gould seems to be chatting to the reader. They don't work and they would probably have been edited out. But of course he died before he could polish the book. A strong editor might have confronted these problems before.

So ends a rather spectacular career in science and literature with a whimper. Not a good book, actually a pretty bad book. Not one I'd recommend.