Stephen Jay Gould’s Books: The Balanced Sublime

Abstract

In questioning the millennium, Stephen Jay Gould tells the story of an autistic child, a mentally challenged young man who nevertheless can tell in a flash the day you were born given the date you were born. Gould studies his subject until he understands the way this feat is accomplished. He realizes that every 28 years there is a consistent unit—28 extra days over the standard 52 weeks plus seven days for leap years, the equivalent of five weeks. His subject . . . had added up extra days laboriously until he came to 28 years—the first span that always adds exactly the same total number of extra days, with the sum of extra days exactly divisible by seven. Every 28 years includes 35 extra days, and 35 extra days makes five weeks. You see, he had given me the right answer to my question—but I had not understood him at first. I had asked: “Is there anything special about the number 28 when you figure out the day of the week for dates in different years?” and he had answered: “Yes . . . five weeks.” May we all make such excellent use of our special skills, whatever and however limited they may be, as we pursue the most noble of all our mental activities in trying to make sense of this wonderful world, and the small part we must play in the history of life. Actually, I didn’t quote his beautiful answer fully. He said to me: “Yes, Daddy, five weeks.” His name is Jesse. He is my firstborn son, and I am very proud of him. . . . This anecdote exemplifies Stephen Jay Gould’s passionate interest in science; equally, it testifies to his dispassionate pursuit of the science that interests him, a probing skepticism that with patient effort yields the correct answer. For Gould the scientist it is of no interest that his experimental subject is his son.