The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox by Stephen Jay Gould, Harmony/Jonathan Cape, $25.95/£18.99, ISBN 0609601407/022406309X Reviewed by Maggie McDonald
“THE common goal of human wisdom, achieved through the union of natural knowledge and creative art,” says Stephen Jay Gould, is what unites the sciences with the humanities. The springboard for this, his last book, begins in the ancient world with a proverb about the fox and the hedgehog. The cunning of the fox lies in its ability to change its strategies again and again to achieve its goal – escaping from hunting dogs is the example – while the hedgehog has a single…
