"The common designation of 'evolution' then leads to one of the most frequent and portentous errors in our analysis of human life and history--the overly reductionist assumption that the Darwinian natural paradigm will fully encompass out social and technological history as well," p219.
More than any other reason, the quote exemplifies fear that inspires the desire to keep evolution out of classrooms. Slippery slope arguments that learning evolution will lead students to practice social Darwinism. I think we are capable of learning about natural selection without enforcing natural selection. Gould makes the case that human culture and social interactions defines humanity; ideas spread faster than natural selection and even though we are equipped with the same brain, our culture allows us to do so much more than our earliest ancestors.
"Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved," 230.
Darwin used these almost poet words to end the Origin of Species. Yes beautiful things have and are being evolved and yes some particularly nasty things have been evolved too. But everything that has ever lived has one thing in common: it came from an ancestor that survived long enough to replicate. Those survivors and reproducers are fulfilling their banal evolutionary goal; get some DNA into the next generation. Nature picks those winners and the variety and diversity of these winners is truly beautiful.
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