Bully for Sarah Brady

Stephen Jay Gould’s books are an emporium of provocative ideas about natural history and biology. If you ever have a long weekend at a cabin in the woods I’d suggest a copy of Bully for Brontosaurus, or Dinosaur in a Haystack. Gould excelled at taking two apparently disconnected concepts and smashing them together to produce original and challenging notions.

And he fought against wongheaded ideas about evolution.

Some interpretations of Darwin suggest that nature selects traits over many generations, trying what works and what doesn't; one type of horned elk will be best equipped to much savannah grass, while others perish because they lack pointy incisors. And behold, over the generations, the right animals for the right environment evolve.

But it's bunk, at least in part. The geologic record says disaster intervenes: comets, earthquakes, tsunamis, and incidents of bad luck. The most virile elk at the door of breeding age - a creature with all of the right traits - gets suddenly crushed in a landslide. Gould says evolution is not a steady, graceful progression, but instead broken up with violent episodes.

I was reminded of Gould's ideas when I read about Sarah Brady. This preganant woman stabbed to death another woman who had planned to cut the baby from her womb. And on this past Wednesday Brady gave birth to her daughter. It's been a busy week.

And it looks like natural selection is at work (in all it's violent glory) in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.