I WELL remember the summer I read The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. It was 2002, Stephen Jay Gould had just died, but he had left behind this magnum opus, a substantial work that summarised and synthesised his view of evolution. I purchased a copy right away. As soon as my teaching duties ended for the summer, I settled down to enjoy the wisdom of a master of science writing, and drink deeply of his ideas.
I got a rude shock. Not only was the book huge, but Gould’s rhetorical excesses had been left unchecked – the parenthetical asides (and…
