Stephen Jay Gould was a wonderful ‘populariser of science’, who unashamedly never ‘dumbed down’ his writing for the non-academic masses. And as he tended to write in paragraphs a yard long comprising maximum of 2 sentences in each, the reading was sometimes rather difficult. Speaking as an unacademic mass. But it was always worthwhile. Because as professor of geology, evolutionary biology, history of science and about 6 other heavyweight topics, Stephen Jay Gould was a clever boy (‘was’ because he sadly died of cancer about 10 years ago) but always wrote with wit and humour and with a nod to his passions of opera, baseball and chocolate. Ya gotta love that. Except the opera. And baseball.

He was a typical east coast intellectual liberal. A democrat. Who anyone south of the Mason-Dixie line would call a ‘commie’. And when he wrote about the history of science, about times when science itself was the exclusive domain of privileged, white rich men, he implores the reader not to judge their views by our contemporary standards. Because they came up with theories about white supremacy, about racial inequalities and inadequacies, about male superiority, all backed up with loads of data and calculations, but all based on the prevailing zeitgeist of their generation. Which was that educated rich white men were the pinnacle of God’s achievement. They could prove it. Empirically. And statistically. Every which way. But Gould would implore NOT to judge people, however abhorrent their ideas seem to us today in our post-milennial, post-feminist, post-obsessively PC world view. They can only be judged by the values of their times, not by those of ours. Mainly cos they weren’t here now. If ya get my drift.

And these were the men who justified colonialism and slavery and all manner of political evil. The scientists would give them a ‘framework’ of justification. And often accompanied by the church and theologians who would give moral and ethical blessings to such horrific practices. Apartheid was started by the Dutch Church in South Africa and rolled out from that. Where a nice ambiguous passage is found in the bible one day and the next all the rights have been taken away from the indigenous majority because they have different coloured skin.

So when they decide to take down a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford because some of his actions 100 years ago were not particularly ‘PC’ by 2020 standards, that breaks Gould’s guideline. And when Rudyard Kipling’s work is defaced at Manchester University because he was a product of colonialism, that does too. His crime was to think in the only way he could, given his circumstances of birth and time. He lacked the foresight to think like a man 100 years later and fall line with modern-day liberalism. How the fuck could he?

He wrote Jungle Book. Leave him alone. He was merely a man of HIS time.

Happy Monday

A xxxx