Stephen Jay Gould’s evolutionary vision pivots around one insistence: evolution is not predetermined.
Where Dawkins’ gene-centric view foregrounds directional outcomes through unitary selection, Gould foregrounds variation, contingency, and the open-endedness of history. This is not mere empirical preference. It is a defence against deterministic construal.
Variation First
For Gould, variation is not raw material to be sorted by selection.
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Variation is primary, pervasive, and relational.
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Patterns of difference are not subordinate to fitness, units, or optimisation.
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Contingency is not an inconvenience; it is constitutive.
In emphasising variation, Gould refuses to allow evolution to be read as inevitable, predictable, or fully explainable through mechanistic reduction. Variation becomes a resistance to deterministic cuts.
Determinism as Target
Gould’s opposition to Dawkins is not simply a matter of genes versus organisms. It is a matter of ontological and explanatory determinism:
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Dawkins’ formalism implies inevitability: given the gene, the trajectory of adaptation follows.
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Gould insists that history matters: the order, timing, and context of variation can redirect evolutionary paths in ways that no single unit can anticipate.
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Contingency ensures that evolution is non-linear, plural, and perspectival.
Gould’s critique highlights what relational ontology foregrounds: actualisation is perspectival, not inevitable.
Variation as Relational Cut
Gould treats variation itself as a cut in the field of evolution:
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It is relational, dependent on environment, development, and interaction.
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It cannot be reduced to gene-level differences alone.
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It foregrounds multiplicity, revealing alternative pathways that a deterministic model would obscure.
Variation is simultaneously a phenomenon and a lens: it both exists in the field and structures the way the field can be read.
The Pressure of Intolerance
Gould’s resistance exposes a familiar pattern of intolerance:
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Intolerance of determinism: the imposition of inevitability is rejected.
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Intolerance of reductionism: single-unit explanations are insufficient for relational multiplicity.
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Intolerance of reification: traits, lineages, and adaptations cannot be fully treated as stable entities.
These intolerances are not failures of reasoning. They are structural pressures generated when relational possibilities confront formal simplification.
Emergence, Contingency, and Open-Endedness
Gould’s emphasis on contingency allows emergence to appear without being tamed:
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Traits arise not from inevitability, but from the interaction of multiple relational constraints.
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Patterns persist not because they are optimal, but because they survive in context.
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History matters: what occurs depends on what came before, but also on how it came.
This relational approach foregrounds possibility over necessity, resisting the temptation to reduce evolution to deterministic computation.
Anger as Epistemic Signal
The spirited opposition to Dawkins is instructive. It reveals that:
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Resistance is often driven by epistemic and ontological stakes, not personality.
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Intolerance is a signal of what is at stake in construal: the preservation of relational multiplicity, contingency, and non-deterministic becoming.
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Scientific argument and affect are entangled when the field of possibility is threatened by overly formal cuts.
Relational Takeaway
Gould teaches that variation is not secondary, not merely raw material, not a statistical backdrop.
It is a field of resistance — a way to preserve relational openness against the sedimenting pressures of determinism and reduction.
To read Gould relationally is to see resistance as method, and contingency as structure.
Looking Ahead
The next post in this mini-series can explore Rose and Lewontin — the Intolerance of Reduction.
Here, the focus will shift from the philosophical defence of contingency to multi-level, distributed, and ecological relationality — further tracing how evolutionary thought generates intolerances when confronted with relational pressures.
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