The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities [Hardcover]

Stephen Jay Gould (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2003

In his final book and his first full-length original title since Full House in 1996, the eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long.

To establish his two protagonists, Gould draws from a seventh century b.c. proverb attributed to the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus that said roughly, “The fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows one great and effective strategy.” While emphatically rejecting any simplistic attempt to assign either science or the humanities to one or the other of these approaches to knowledge, Gould uses this ancient concept to demonstrate that neither strategy can work alone, but that these seeming opposites can be conjoined into a common enterprise of tremendous unity and power.

In building his case, Gould shows why the common assumption of an inescapable conflict between science and the humanities (in which he includes religion) is false, mounts a spirited rebuttal to the ideas that his intellectual rival E. O. Wilson set forth in his book Consilience, and explains why the pursuit of knowledge must always operate upon the bedrock of nature’s randomness. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox is a controversial discourse, rich with facts and observations gathered by one of the most erudite minds of our time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Though this final book is not the most accessible of Stephen Jay Gould's meditations on science and culture, it is a complex and revealing look at one of the late paleontologist's great passions: the unity of human endeavor. The titular hedgehog and fox refer to the classic dichotomy of persistence opposed to agility of thought, which Gould uses as a backbone in comparing, contrasting, and balancing science and the humanities. Unlike many scientists, he does not consider humanities (nor religion) to be inferior to his discipline. Drawing liberally from Renaissance and Scientific Revolution sources, Gould shows that the perceived differences in the two cultures are mostly false. Readers of E.O. Wilson's Consilience will find many similarities here, though Gould emphatically rejects Wilson's conclusion that reductionism is an appropriate way to unite the two cultures and offers examples of when such an approach might fail.

If we discover that a majority of human cultures have favored infanticide under certain conditions, and that such a practice arose for good Darwinian reasons, shall we then claim that we have resolved the question of the rightness of such a practice with a "yea"?

This volume is presented by its editor almost unchanged from the manuscript Gould had finished shortly before his death. The result is a book with such unedited detail that its dense blend of history and philosophy is at times overwhelmingly difficult. Nevertheless, Gould's deeply held conviction that human understanding comes from all our cultural efforts shines through. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly

The same artful brew of miscellany with which Gould treated readers of Natural History magazine for 30 years is again pressed into service in this volume, which the famous Harvard evolutionary biologist finished shortly before his death in May 2002. Gould's point of departure is the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus' proverb about the cunning fox versus the persistent hedgehog, which the author employs to exemplify what he asserts is the proper relationship between the sciences and the humanities-they are separate but equal players, he says, in the joint enterprise of wisdom. In his inimitable style, Gould mines rare and idiosyncratic sources to debunk the common notion of science and the humanities (which includes religion in Gould's taxonomy) as mortal foes. But in the end it amounts to a broadside at E.O. Wilson, whose 1998 book, Consilience, posited a reductionist model of the disciplines joined in a kind of Chain of Being, with particle physics on one end, ethics and religion on the other, and biology somewhere in between. Admitting his annoyance that Wilson got to the term first, Gould argues that consilience (a word originated by the philosopher of science William Whewell in 1840) more correctly applies to his own theory than Wilson's. While this book is a fine read, rich with learning and insight, it has its cryptic, unreadable moments, possibly because Gould's publisher-out of respect for the deceased author, it said-decided to issue the book largely untampered with except for copyediting changes.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (April 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609601407
• ISBN-13: 978-0609601402
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #494,347 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. He published over twenty books, received the National Book and National Book Critics Circle Awards, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Idea Translated Into an Episodic Essay., September 30, 2004

By 

Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities (Hardcover)

Having read E.O. Wilson's book "Conscilience," and (seemingly) having the same blanching reaction to it that Gould did, I was hoping from the outset to give five stars to to this book. But alas, by the time I finished reading it, though I agreed with all of its major points, my conscience only let me give the book 3 stars. Here's why.

First, the book was published with little editing. This, of course, is hardly Gould's fault. While he lived to write the book (and I'm still very glad he did), he passed away before doing much editing. Be that as it may, the book would have seriously benefitted from having someone look it over. In many chapters, Gould meanders, tosses irrelevant asides, and strays regularly from promising lines of thought. That accounts for one star (that I subtract cautiously because, as i say, it is hardly Gould's fault here).

The other two stars are subtracted because of Gould's strange use of historical anecdotes. Gould, of course, is known for this and many collections of his essays find him historically preoccupied. Be that as it may, the subject of this book seemed more to demand the type of abstract and polemical discussion that Gould avowedly is trying to avoid here. Some of the anecdotes (bringing up Nabokov as a legitimate 'straddler' between science and the humanities) are great as case-bolstering asides, but many simply left me befuddled (a) as to why they were relevant; and (b) why they took up entire chapters.

The reason I dwell on the superfluity of Gould's anecdotal preoccupation is because the chapters I enjoyed most were the chapters where he hardly used anecdotes at all. One chapter finds Gould offering a mighty persuasive case that the science wars are themselves a 'social construction.' He recounts that not many of his scientist friends are even aware that there ever was such a thing, while none of his humanities friends have ever held (anything close to) the views sardonically attributed to them. No historical anecdotes in this chapter, and the chapter was all the better for it.

The chapter that really earns its keep, however, is the last one which sees Gould taking E.O. Wilson politely to task for his view that conscilience is tantamount to scientific reductionism - that the science/humanities "divide" can be ameliorated only by scientifically explaining the humanities. Gould recognizes that Wilson's argument here is nothing but an overly-optimistic and exhorbitantly doubtful pipe-dream. Given such seemingly impenetrable scientific failures as: (a) the inability to explain consciousness in stricly neurological and non-subjective terms, and (b) the naturalistic fallacy, whereby a factual "is" doesn't per se translate to an ethical "ought," Gould concludes that at least on some level, the humanities and the sciences will always occupy seperate places in the human condition.

While this concluding chapter was only about 35 pages, it seems to contain virtually all of the main points in the book. That made and makes me wonder why, then, we were presented with so many maundering chapters on this and that historical anecdote to get to one chapter that succinctly makes and argues every promised point in the book!

That is why I gave the book 3, rather than my hoped for 5 stars. Buy the book, especially if you want a useful counterpoint to Wilson's "Conscilience." Also check out Mary Midgley's "Science and Poetry" for many of the same points argued more succinctly.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Attempt to reconcile natural science and the humanities, August 24, 2004

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities (Hardcover)

In this posthumous publication, Gould provides a thorough historical overview of the development of scientific thought in various fields. He attempts to bridge the gap between the humanities/social sciences and the traditional idea of science as it finds expression in the natural sciences like astronomy, physics, geology etc.

The title refers to hedgehogs that establish themselves so successfully in a particular field that they can forever keep their competitors at a distance, and to foxes that in their turn spread the seed of knowledge through their genius and versatility. The fox and the hedgehog are the models of how the sciences and humanities should interact, because Gould believed that neither single strategy would work.

But a fruitful merger of these seemingly polar opposites could, with the necessary goodwill and restraint, be conjoined into a diverse but common enterprise of power and unity. The book is a plea for increased understanding between the humanities and the natural sciences.

He encourages natural scientists to improve their communication skills and to read beyond their field of specialty, and he criticizes those in the humanities who have no knowledge or understanding of the natural sciences. This can lead to the embarrassing stupidities so well documented in the book Intellectual Impostures (Fashionable Nonsense) by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox is an engaging text and a stimulating read. It is accessible enough for the general reader and although not considered an example of his best writing, definitely worth a read.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book every true scientist should read!, February 15, 2004

By 

"wang52" (Huntingdon, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities (Hardcover)

Truly enjoy the book, a passionate humanistic scientist in action! However, I do have some problems about the logic and arguments of the book:

1. Gould contributes the initial contention between science and the humanities to the turf battle and the power struggle between the Renaissance humanism and the rise of modern science, more specifically, to the Modern vs. Ancient debate in the 17th & 18th centuries. I suspect the historical accuracy of such analysis and doubt that it has any significant impact on the contention today. Maybe Gould himself commits to a fictional dichotomy which he argues against all along.

2. It seems to me that there is a significant inconsistency between chapter 5 in which he reveals the fallacious and fictional dichotomies between science and the humanities and chapter 6 in which he admits of the real tension between scientism and the critic of scientism (see pp. 113-115). It confirms my impression that "science wars" are for real and should be taken seriously, not just extremists' paranoid illusions.

3. What bothers me the most is an apparent paradox between Gould's fundamental assumption of the epistemic status of science (a magisterium about fact or IS) and the humanities (a magisterium about value or OUGHT) on the one hand and his relentless call for integration of these two "non-overlapping magisterial" (in brief, NOMA) as his overarching goal of the book on the other. First of all, if science and the humanities belong to two non-overlapping domains of discussion with logically totally different aims, methods and objects, then how could they be integrated since there is no any commonality between them??? Gould did try to answer this charge in chapter 8 in terms of a metaphor "one from many," but without any success in my humble judgment. Secondly, I believe that the above paradox is due to Gould's beloved separationism between science and the humanities (religion included), i.e., his thesis of NOMA as he defended fiercely in his Rocks of Ages. Ironically, it is the same Gould -- who warns us to guard against any dichotomous oppositions between science and the humanities throughout the book -- who introduces a more dangerous dichotomy between fact and value through the backdoor. As anyone who are familiar with the recent development of Science Studies and comparative studies of science and religion (all start from Thomas Kuhn) already knows, there is no such sharp distinction between fact and value. As Gould himself has admitted from time to time when he dismisses the myth of objectivity (p. 116ff), science is heavily value-laden. So besides the myth of objectivity of science, Gould has to give up his myth of fact/value dichotomy too! Otherwise his "divine" goal of integration between science and the humanities is doomed.