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My introduction to Stephen Jay Gould's work came in the 1970s, when I avidly read all his articles in Natural History . In 1990, when I was asked by a London newspaper to name my favorite book, I selected Wonderful Life; this led to my receiving a letter from Stephen and to the beginning of a frequent and voluminous correspondence between us. Many subjects close to both our hearts have been discussed in letters: from the place of contingency to our shared love for museums . In 1993 I wrote of ways of joining particulars with generalities—in my own case, clinical narratives with neuroscience—and he replied: "I have long experienced exactly the same tension, trying to assuage my delight in individual things through my essays and my interest in generality through my more technical writing. I loved the Burgess Shale work so much because it allowed me to integrate the two." I often wrote excited letters to Stephen the moment I had read his columns: in 1995, about his article on Sacculina, a meditation on whether such a life-form could be called degenerate; and in 1996, about some just-published research of his on microevolutionary processes and hybridization effects. I was especially fascinated by his 1998 article on Buffon's trajectory from his early Platonic thinking to a historical viewpoint—partly because of a similar evolution in my own thinking. Stephen is now a good friend as well as a colleague—we dine together, walk the streets together , celebrate birthdays together , go to museums and botanical gardens together. He is an enchanting companion as well as a major intellectual force, and both aspects of him come together in his unique essays. (en) |
