This stems from Gould's long-running public debate with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human sociobiology and its descendant evolutionary psychology, which Gould and Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and Steven Pinker.

Some evolutionary biologists, such as Richard Lewontin and the late Stephen Jay Gould have employed dialectical materialism in their approach, playing a precautionary heuristic role in their work.

In response, Gould, Richard Lewontin, and others from the Boston area wrote the subsequently well referenced letter to The New York Review of Books entitled, " Against ' Sociobiology '".

With Richard Lewontin, Gould wrote an influential 1979 paper entitled, " The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm ", which introduced the architectural term " spandrel " into evolutionary biology.

" Gould and Lewontin thus defined spandrels in evolutionary biology to mean any biological feature of an organism that arises as a necessary side consequence of other features, which is not directly selected for by natural selection.

" Gould and Lewontin asserted that it is Panglossian for evolutionary biologists to view all traits as atomized things that had been naturally selected for, and criticised biologists for not granting theoretical space to other causes, such as phyletic and developmental constraints.

Criticism, most notably made by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, centered on sociobiology's contention that genes play an ultimate role in human behavior and that traits such as aggressiveness can be explained by biology rather than a person's social environment.

In particular, Lewontin, Rose & Kamin drew a detailed distinction between the politics and history of an idea and its scientific validity, as has Stephen Jay Gould.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, a colleague of Gould ’ s, is a proponent of said argument in relation to the cognitive ability tests that determine a person ’ s intelligence quotient.

The panglossian paradigm is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin to refer to the notion that everything has specifically adapted to suit specific purposes.

Over the years, the Review has featured reviews and articles by such writers and thinkers as Timothy Garton Ash, Margaret Atwood, Russell Baker, Saul Bellow, Isaiah Berlin, Harold Bloom, Joseph Brodsky, Noam Chomsky, J. M. Coetzee, Frederick Crews, Ronald Dworkin, John Kenneth Galbraith, Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Jay Gould, Murray Kempton, Richard Lewontin, Alison Lurie, Peter Medawar, Daniel Mendelsohn, Vladimir Nabokov, V. S. Naipaul, Peter G. Peterson, Nathaniel Rich, John Searle, Zadie Smith, I. F. Stone, Desmond Tutu, John Updike, Derek Walcott, Steven Weinberg, Garry Wills and Tony Judt.

Coon eventually resigned from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, while some of his other works were discounted because he would not agree with the evidence brought forward by Franz Boas, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Leonard Lieberman and others.

He disagrees with some contentions of popular scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Leon Kamin, Steven Rose, and Jared Diamond.

The word ' Neo-Lysenkoism ' has occasionally been invoked by hereditarian researchers as a rhetorical term in the debates over race and intelligence and sociobiology to describe scientists minimizing the role of genes in shaping human behavior, such as Leon Kamin, Richard Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould and Barry Mehler.

Many people, such as Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin feared that sociobiology was biologicially determinist.

The most notable critics of the view that genes play a direct role in human behaviour have been biologists Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould.

Critics ( most notably Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould ) contend that the adaptationists ( John Maynard Smith, W. D.

Evolutionary psychologists name several prominent scientists as supposed proponents of the standard social science model, including Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, B. F. Skinner, Richard Lewontin, John Money, and Steven J. Gould.

American Richard Lewontin and Japanese Motoo Kimura were heavily influenced by Wright.

It presents a selection of both positive and negative reviews of the book, by such figures as Philip Morrison, Richard Lewontin, Alex Comfort, Jacob Bronowski, and more in-depth analyses by Peter Medawar, Robert K. Merton, and Andre Lwoff.

1985 ISBN 0-674-20281-3 ), Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin sketch a dialectical approach to biology.

Kaplan therefore argues that seen in this way both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments.

Fracchia and Lewontin regard memetics as reductionist and inadequate.

* Richard C. Lewontin — Harvard University

Lewontin argued that while traditional Darwinism has portrayed the organism as passive recipient of environmental influences, a correct understanding should emphasize the organism as an active constructer of its own environment.

* The Cold War & the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years ( Noam Chomsky ( Editor ) Authors: Ira Katznelson, R. C. Lewontin, David Montgomery, Laura Nader, Richard Ohmann, Ray Siever, Immanuel Wallerstein, Howard Zinn ( 1997 ) ISBN 1-56584-005-4.

( adapted from Lewontin 1974, p. 12 ).

This leads to a " sleight of hand " ( as Lewontin terms it ) whereby variables in the equations of one domain, are considered parameters or constants, where, in a full-treatment they would be transformed themselves by the evolutionary process and are in reality functions of the state variables in the other domain.

* Richard C. Lewontin.

Reid ( 2008 – 2009 ), Kathleen Kennedy Townsend ( 2007 – 2008 ); David E. Sanger ( 2006 – 2007 ); Edward P. Jones ( 2005 – 2006 ); Diane Rehm ( 2004 – 2005 ); Dr. Josiah Ober ( 2003 – 2004 ); Norine Johnson ( 2002 – 2003 ); Mario Livio ( 2001 – 2002 ); Wole Soyinka, Henry Rosemont, Michael Ellis-Tolaydo, Lucille Clifton ( Spring 2001 ); Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ( Fall 2000 ); Richard Lewontin ( Spring 2000 ); Ben Cardin ( Fall 1999 ).

This heuristic was also applied to the theory of punctuated equilibrium proposed by Niles Eldredge and Gould.

Apart from the commonly cited example of water turning to steam with increased temperature, Gould and Eldredge noted another analogy in information theory, " with its jargon of equilibrium, steady state, and homeostasis maintained by negative feedback ," and " extremely rapid transitions that occur with positive feedback.

His theory of peripatric speciation ( a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced ), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould.

This and other data led Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to publish the seminal paper on punctuated equilibrium in 1971.

It is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to contrast with their model of punctuated equilibrium, which is gradualist itself, but argues that most evolution is marked by long periods of evolutionary stability ( called stasis ), which is punctuated by rare instances of branching evolution.

In 1972, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a landmark paper developing this theory and called it punctuated equilibria.

Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species.

Although some of the basic workings of the theory were proposed and identified by Mayr in 1954, historians of science generally recognize the 1972 paper by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould as the foundational document of the new paleobiological research program.

Punctuated equilibrium differs from Mayr's hypothesis mainly in that Eldredge and Gould placed considerably greater emphasis on stasis, whereas Mayr was generally concerned with explaining the morphological discontinuity ( or " sudden jumps ") found in the fossil record.

A year before their 1972 Eldredge and Gould paper, Niles Eldredge published a paper in the journal Evolution which suggested that gradual evolution was seldom seen in the fossil record and argued that Ernst Mayr's standard mechanism of allopatric speciation might suggest a possible resolution.

The Eldredge and Gould paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in 1971.

I coined the term punctuated equilibrium and wrote most of our 1972 paper, but Niles is the proper first author in our pairing of Eldredge and Gould.

John Wilkins and Gareth Nelson have argued that French architect Pierre Trémaux proposed an " anticipation of the theory of punctuated equilibrium of Gould and Eldredge.

When Eldredge and Gould published their 1972 paper, allopatric speciation was considered the " standard " theory of speciation.

Before Eldredge and Gould alerted their colleagues to the prominence of stasis in the fossil record, most evolutionists considered stasis to be rare or unimportant.

Second, Eldredge and Gould relied upon an entirely different mechanism.

Where Simpson relied upon a synergistic interaction between genetic drift and a shift in the adaptive fitness landscape, Eldredge and Gould relied upon ordinary speciation, particularly Ernst Mayr's concept of allopatric speciation.

" Eldredge and Gould, believing that evolution jumps between stability and relative rapidity, are described as " discrete variable speedists ," and " in this respect they are genuinely radical.

" It is this particular commitment that Eldredge and Gould have aimed to overturn.

John Lyne and Henry Howe, in a more positive evaluation, states that " re-analysis of existing fossil data has shown, to the increasing satisfaction of the paleontological community, that Eldredge and Gould were correct in identifying periods of evolutionary stasis which are interrupted by much shorter periods of evolutionary change.

* Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism-by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould

* Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered-by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge

* Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age-by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge