Coincidental?

[John Grehan]

At 03:51 AM 4/22/2003 +0000, Ken Kinman wrote:
>Robin and John,
>     Along the lines of the post I just made, I think the influence of
>Gould's death is perhaps somewhere in between.  It certainly was a blow.

In this respect it may be that the significance of Gould' s influence lies
mainly within the US where his work played out the metaphysics of
creation-Darwinian evolution that has a prominence largely endemic to that
country.

>     However, I personally believe the death of Peter Ashlock may ultimately
>have had an even more profound impact in the long run.  That the 1991
>systematics textbook of Mayr and Ashlock has been out of print for some
>years now is even more devastating to the future of biological systematics.

Admittedly its been a long time since I looked at that book, but I do not
recall anything so critical. As for biogeography, Mayr had what I regard as
a devastating influence on the discipline by suppressing panbiogeography
(as did Gould) from the dialogue. Naturally if one is a Darwinian
biogeographer who believes alternatives should be discouraged then of
course Mayr and Gould did the right thing.

John Grehan


Dr. John Grehan
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