I was shocked to hear yesterday that Stephen Jay Gould had died. I didn't know he was ill. He died of cancer, but not the cancer he had outwitted 20 years ago. His mind was so creative, and fertile and brilliant I thought he would go on forever. A light has truly gone out.

Gould was a champion, a culture hero, for those who strive to know everything. Though often arrogant in his relations with others, he nevertheless felt a need to explain himself and his ideas to the common public. I loved his essays in "Natural History" which often spun the most creative and playful analogies. One could teach teach writing from his science essays. He was always very engaging.

Gould was an identified humanist, and a defender of rational inquiry over the obscurantism of creationism, indeed all obscurantism. In a world in which irrationalism has risen to be such a powerful political force, I feel a little less safe without Stephen Jay Gould.

Like him I was brought up In Queens, and love (and still do) the Museum of Natural History. Gould has once written that one is especially lucky to be able to transform the enchantments of childhood into the vocational pursuit of a lifetime. Indeed he did. Having becoming enamored of dinosaurs at the age of seven, he spent the rest of his life playing with dinosaurs, as he became the best known evolutionist since Darwin.

Adios, amigo.

-- Joseph Chuman, Leader, Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County

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