Gould on Darwin's worms

[sawyl]

I very much liked Stephen J. Gould's reaction to Darwin's late work, original published in Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes but also anthologised in The Oxford Book of Modern Scientific Writing:

Darwin was not a conscious philosopher. He did not, like Huxley and Lyell, write explicit treaties on methodology. Yet I do not think he was unaware of what he was doing, as he cleverly composed a series of books tat two levels, thus expressing his love for nature in the small and his ardent desire to establish both evolution and the principles of historical sciences. I was musing on this issue as I completed the worm book two weeks ago. Was Darwin really conscious of what he had done as he wrote his last professional lines, or did he proceed intuitively, as men of his genius sometimes do? Then I can to the very last paragraph, and I shook with the joy of insight. Clever old man; he knew full well. In his last words, he looked back to his beginning, compared those worms with his first corals, and completed his life's work in both the large and the small...

It's a brilliant evocation of one of those moments of visceral intellectual excitement where, when reading a great piece of scientific or philosophical writing, everything clicks into place and the scope of the thing being examined suddenly increases as you comprehend the sheer audacity author's underlying intentions. It's a rare thing, but Gould really seems to capture it.