Stephen Jay Gould demonstrated the validity of two events, both triggered by the same law of random statistics: the extinction of the .400 hitting average in baseball and the lack of an inherent trend to complexity.
Gould argued that mammal-centric observers miss the mark by focusing on mammals at the expense of the much more prolific and stable bacteria life form, of which there are ten trillion in a cubic cm of soil. On numbers alone, this proves little since there are many more viruses, prions and electrons than bacteria. Using his same logic then, one could argue that Gould is bacteria-centric. Any peak in a statistical group can be flattened by looking at more populous statistical groups. Gould’s conclusion may prove something about the peak in relation to the whole bacteria set, but it proves little about the actual peak. For example, bacteria may greatly outnumber mammals, but this proves nothing with respect to the existence of mammals. One might say Gould commits a fallacy by undermining a theory by changing the definition of the argument upon which it is based.
With respect to the extinction of the .400 hitting average in baseball, Gould tries to demonstrate that emphasizing traits undermines general and larger trends. Humans are a mere drop in the existence bucket, contends Gould, in comparison to 4 billion years of existence for bacteria. Gould often contradicts his own arguments. He advocates shunning baseball via a celebration of it. He often sounds like a politician at a fundraiser who talks about eliminating campaign funding! Gould tries to use obsession with baseball as a means of proving that a focus on human beings clouds the bigger picture. He never mentions that some things are more significant than others.
Gould’s second conclusion is that any kind of evolutionary progress is merely a bias of human-centric research. To show there is no progress when i
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