Stephen Jay Gould and the Value of Neutrality of Science During the Cold War

Abstract

Stephen Jay Gould was a paleontologist and scientific celebrity at the close of the twentieth century, most famous for his popular writings on evolution and his role in the American creationist controversies of that era. In the early 1980s, Gould was drawn into the "nuclear winter" episode through his friendship with Carl Sagan, an astronomer and popular science celebrity. Sagan helped develop the theory of nuclear winter and subsequently used the theory as evidence to petition the United States government to scale back its nuclear armament. The theory of nuclear winter claimed that even a small nuclear exchange could result in a atmospheric blackening akin to the extinction event of the late Cretaceous. Gould was not a climate scientist but he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives as an expert on historical extinction events. Gould's insistence on the value-neutrality of nuclear winter reveals much about the moral politics of science in late Cold War America. Coming at the heels of leftist scientific activism of the 1980s, the nuclear winter episode demonstrates how value-neutrality emerged the salient feature of scientific involvement in American politics in this period.