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- Early in his career, Gould and Niles Eldredge developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, according to which evolutionary change occurs relatively rapidly, alternating with longer periods of relative evolutionary stability. It was Gould who coined the term "punctuated equilibria", but the idea was first presented in Eldredge's doctoral dissertation on Devonian trilobites and in an article published the previous year on allopatric speciation. According to Gould, punctuated equilibrium revised a key pillar "in the central logic of Darwinian theory." Some evolutionary biologists have argued that while punctuated equilibrium was "of great interest to biology generally," it merely modified neo-Darwinism in a manner that was fully compatible with what had been known before. Other biologists emphasize the theoretical novelty of punctuated equilibrium, and argued that evolutionary stasis had been "unexpected by most evolutionary biologists" and "had a major impact on paleontology and evolutionary biology."
What a beautiful human. I pretty much owe my career to him. I was studying engineering in undergrad, and I tool intro biology to satisfy a credit. The instructor read a passage from one of Gould's essays, and I thought it was beautiful. I then picked up Full House, which in turn led me to read every single book he published, pick up a minor in biology, and then go into biophysics as a grad career. If it's possible to love a human you've never met by proxy, he's it for me.