One less interesting person in the world.

[M_Six]

Stephen Jay Gould died today. The collective IQ of humanity just dropped significantly.

Story

[Germ]

Sorry to hear that. I've read several of his books and used to love reading him in Natural History magazine.

[daveleau]

Man! I didn't even know he was ill. We studied his works pretty heavily in an evolution class I took in college. Very prolific. This IS a loss to science that will not easily be replaced.
Dave

[Germ]

I'm really surprised more people haven't commented on this.

[skuz]

Well, Germ, I have to admit I have no idea who he was.

[vass0922]

I 2nd that skuz
I read the article but no clue ...

[daveleau]

Behind Darwin, he was the top mind in evolutionary science.

[M_Six]

He wrote about many, many things. He was a one-in-a-million thinker.

For those that care to learn more and maybe, possibly expand your mind just a tad:

http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/...hen_gould.html

One of his more famous pieces of insight was (and I'm paraphrasing drastically here) that humanity is not the end all of evolution. We are merely a twig in a huge tree that just happen to develop, purely by chance, into life as we know it today. And if you replanted the same seed from which the tree sprouted, there's virtually no chance it would grow the same way again.

In other words, our very existence is based entirely on dumb luck. The dinosaurs' reign ended because of dumb luck. Ours could end just as easily. Make each day count.