The hedgehog, the fox, and the magister's pox : mending the gap between science and the humanities

In his final book, Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long. Stephen Jay Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long. To establish his two protagonists, Gould draws from a seventh century b.c. proverb attributed to the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus that said roughly, "The fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows one great and effective strategy." While emphatically rejecting any simplistic attempt to assign either science or the humanities to one or the other of these approaches to knowledge, Gould uses this ancient concept to demonstrate that neither strategy can work alone, but that these seeming opposites can be conjoined into a common enterprise of tremendous unity and power. In building his case, Gould shows why the common assumption of an inescapable conflict between science and the humanities (in which he includes religion) is false, mounts a spirited rebuttal to the ideas that his intellectual rival E.O. Wilson set forth in his book Consilience, and explains why the pursuit of knowledge must always operate upon the bedrock of nature's randomness. The hedgehog, the fox, and the magister's pox is a controversial discourse, rich with facts and observations gathered by one of the most erudite minds of our time. Contents A Note to the Reader Preface I. The Rite and Rights of a Separating Spring 1. Newton’s Light 2. Scientific “World-Making” and Critical Braking 3. So Noble an Hecatombe: The Weight of Humanism 4. The Mandate of Magister Medice: The Threat of Suppression II. From Paradoxical Ages of Bacon to Swift Sweetness and Light 5. The Dynasty of Dichotomy 6. Reintegration in Triumphant Maturity 7. Sweetness and Light as Tough and Healing Truth III. A Saga of Pluribus and Unum 8. The Fusions of Unum and the Benefits of Pluribus 9. The False Path of Reductionism and the Consilience of Equal Regard Epilog: A Closing Tale of Addition to Adagia by Erasure of Erasmus Index