Daniel c dennett intuition pumps and other tools for thinking

it. It has always been obvious that the most perfect dinosaur will succumb if a comet strikes its homeland with a force hundreds of times greater than all the hydrogen bombs ever made. There is not a word in Cronin’s book that supports his contention that she has made this error. If Gould thinks the role of mass extinctions in evolution is relevant to either of the central problems Cronin addresses, sexual selection and altruism, he does not say how or why. When Cronin turns, in her last chapter, to a fine discussion of the central question in evolutionary theory she has not concentrated on, the origin of species, and points out that it is still an outstanding problem, Gould pounces on this as a last minute epiphany, an ironic admission of defeat for her “panadaptationism.” Preposterous! [p. 44] There is a good project for a student of rhetoric: combing through Gould’s huge body of publications and cataloguing the different species of boom crutch he exploited, beginning with rathering, piling on, and the Gould Two-Step.