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The Hedgehog, The Fox And The Magister's Pox
  • Published: 3 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099440826
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

The Hedgehog, The Fox And The Magister's Pox

Mending and Minding the Misconceived Gap Between Science and the Humanities




The final book from the most celebrated popular science writer in the world.

Completed shortly before his death, this is the last work of science from the most celebrated popular science writer in the world.

In characteristic form, Gould weaves the ideas of some of Western society's greatest thinkers, from Bacon to Galileo to E. O. Wilson, with the uncelebrated ideas of lesser-known yet pivotal intellectuals. He uses their ides to undo an assumption born in the seventeenth century and continuing to this day, that science and the humanities stand in opposition. Gould uses the metaphor of the hedgehog - who goes after one thing at a measured pace, systematically investigating all; the fox - skilled at many things, intuitive and fast; and the magister's pox - a censure from the Catholic Church involved in Galileo's downfall: to illustrate the different ways of responding to knowledge - in a scientific, humanistic or fearful way. He argues that in fact each would benefit by borrowing from the other.

  • Published: 3 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099440826
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University and the curator for invertebrate palaeontology in the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He is the author of over twenty books, and received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the MacArthur Fellowship. He died in May 2002.

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Praise for The Hedgehog, The Fox And The Magister's Pox

Pairs high brilliance with deep modesty.

New Humanist

Reading Gould is not merely a pleasure but an education and a chronicle of the times

Observer

One of the best essayists in the business. He uses his wide background knowledge...as a bridge to entice non-scientists into sharing the excitement of scientific discovery and the curious, convoluted path of new ideas through history

Scotsman

Gould strives to outline a more peaceful, mutually supportive view of the realtionship between the sciences and the humanities

Nature

Not only one of the finest scientific minds of the later twentieth century, but also one of its greatest polymaths

The Times

A fitting tribute to his career, as it combines, in both style and substance, the different themes of his life's work. Blending genuine literary talents with impeccable scientific credentials, Gould crafts an elegant entreaty for scientists and scholars to spend less time complaining about each other and more time combining their considerable resources. We need both the fox and the hedgehog in any intellectual menagerie - the persistent pluralist

Alan C. Hutchinson, Globe and Mail