Darwins Middle PAth - Grade: B PDF

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Alec Milner Intro to Expos Patricia Kain Gould Summary Summary of “Darwin’s Middle Road” In his essay “Darwin’s Middle Road,” Stephen Jay Gould addresses the implicit question of: “How did Charles Darwin discover natural selection” (Gould 61)? Two opposing views provide the answers: “inductivism and eurekaism” (60). According to Gould, the inductivists claim that scientific discovery can only arise from a firm foundation of facts (60). A eureka moment “arises like a bolt of lightning, unanticipated, unpredictable and unanalyzable—but the bolts strike only a few special people” (60). However, Gould argues that neither view alone is adequate to explain how Darwin worked and developed his theory (64). Inductivism fails to describe Darwin’s process, he explains, because “Darwin returned to London without an evolutionary theory” and that “natural selection did not arise from any direct reading of the Beagle’s facts” (63). Conversely, Gould describes how eurekaism cannot explain how Darwin discovered natural selection (64). He explains that “[Darwin] read philosophers, poets, and economists, always searching for meaning and insight” and how this helped Darwin sculpt and build onto his theory of natural selection (65). Gould counters that “the theory of natural selection arose neither as a work-manlike induction from nature’s facts, nor as a mysterious bolt from Darwin’s subconscious, triggered by an accidental reading of Malthus” (64). He argues that “it emerged instead as a result of a conscious and productive search. . . Darwin trod the middle path between inductivism and eurekaism” (64-65). Gould’s thesis is significant because it offers a better understanding of how scientific creativity occurs and can be applied to education standards and techniques, as well as to how history views scientific discovery.

Gould, Stephen Jay. “Darwin’s Middle Road.” In The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. New York: Norton, 1980. 59-68....