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Obituaries
A
Tribute to Stephen Jay Gould '63
A
Tribute to David Mayer Epstein '52
A
Tribute to Virginia Hamilton '57
The
Antiochian is published by the Office of Development and Alumni Relations.
Articles submitted for publication should be addressed to the Antiochian
Editor, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387-1697. Or send via email: alumni@antioch-college.edu Editor:
Rachel Moulton '97
Contributing
Writers:
Laurien Alexandre
Derek Ali
Patricia Corrigan
Masha J. Etkin '63
Lauren Heaton
Dan Kaplan '76
Fred Kraus
Mary Laskowski '02
Meredith Moss
Rachel Moulton '97
Robyn Overstreet '96
Anne Townsend '03
Photography:
Dennie Eagleson '71
Lauren Heaton
©2002
Antioch College
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A Tribute
to Stephen Jay Gould '63
By Masha
J. Etkin, MD '63
Presented at Gould's Memorial Service in 2002
My memories of Steve go back a long way. We met in the fall of 1958
when we both entered Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio as first-year
undergraduates. Steve was 16. We were both in science. We took classes together
and had very close friends in common. In thinking about what to say today,
I realized that my memory of Steve is really part of a much larger collective
memory of shared friends and shared experiences. These friends formed an
emotional and intellectual context that sustained us for years.
In his College Life Aims Paper that we all had to write
that first year, Steve, at the age of 17, described his goals and philosophy
of life.
He wrote how at the age of 6 his father had taken him to the Museum
of Natural History in New York City. It was here that he saw his first
dinosaur. He
wrote "I emerged at the end of that day a young paleontologist. Since
then I have never wavered. While my friends wanted to become cowboys or policemen
when they 'grew up,' it was paleontology for me."
The courses that Steve took as an undergraduate reflected
the breadth of his later work. The focus was certainly on science and
science-related subjects, but he also took courses in music, French drama, western
literature,
philosophy, and languages. He sang in the Antioch chorus and the A
Capella choir. In his last quarter at Antioch (spring of 1963), Steve
took
a course
in the philosophy of physical science. It was in this philosophy course
that important ideas and teachings coalesced and resulted in his writing
a paper
that was to later become the basis for his first published work. It
was entitled "Is
Uniformitarianism Necessary?" and was published in the American
Journal of Science in 1965. Henry Lowood from Stanford University commented on this
work in 1998 and said that it "set the stage for his empirical work,
his later theoretical critique of adaptationism and uniformitarianism
in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and geology, and his historical
writings on 19th century science."
One of the other courses that Steve took was entitled "Case Studies
in Dissent." Political activism was a big part of Steve's life
at Antioch and it continued in later years. The setting of Yellow Springs,
Ohio, in the climate of the late 1950s and early 60s, exposed him to numerous
opportunities for involvement in the civil rights movement. He was on the
student Civil Liberties Committee and the student NAACP. With other students,
he boycotted "Gegners" the local segregated barber shop. He also
went to Springfield, Ohio, with a friend to demonstrate against a segregated
skating rink. As they skated and protested segregation, they sang madigrals
for freedom.
When Steve first entered college, he had serious doubts
about his ability to express himself in writing. In trying to write about
his philosophy of
life in the College Aims Paper, Steve wrote the following: "I wish
I were able to set down in writing what I feel about life. I will try, but
unfortunately I am a very poor writer." And later he continues, "I
have many faults, and perhaps the greatest is a relative inability
to express myself well."
Steve had doubts about the value of cooperative education.
In a letter to Antioch College, his parents wrote, "We feel he is not totally content
in his own mind about the value of his prospective work experience. In brief
we suspect he is not completely convinced that there is more to education
than books, that every work experience is educational and of value." They
further noted that Antioch would undoubtedly show him the way … and
apparently it did.
Steve's first job was at a place familiar to him from childhood -- the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City where he was assistant
to the curator. It was here that he met Margaret Mead whose office was close
to his. The evaluation retrieved from Antioch's files following this
first co-op job is particularly revealing as it hinted that Steve may have
come full circle in finding value in work, especially work not related specifically
to his chosen field. In referring to the co-op paper that he wrote about
his job, they stated, "Excellent paper. Unusually good account of the
object and experience of a museum field trip. After 24 weeks of cleaning,
identifying, and classifying specimens, Steven's paleontologic passion
has not diminished. During the fall, he also worked 14 hours a week selling
paint at Bloomingdale's, where he enjoyed the human comedy." And
I'm sure he did.
Steve's second job was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute where he was a student science assistant.
When Steve boarded his Woods Hole ship that was going
to be his home for the next few months, he brought two books with him:
Marx's Das
Kapital, because of his growing interest in working-class struggles, and
the Bible. Although Steve was very much a scientific materialist, he read
the Bible, studied it and made much use of it as a literary reference. Again,
quoting from his College Life Aims Paper of 1959: "I have a rather
atheistic outlook on the question of religion. I am constantly told
that atheism is a philosophy of pessimism, but my type of atheism is
definitely a positive thing. To me there can be no more exalted feeling than
the
belief
that there is no higher controlling power and that I am responsible
for what I do, be it good or bad."
Soon after Steve entered Antioch he decided to spend
his fourth year at the University of Leeds in England. The experience
at Leeds was pivotal.
Leeds was a working-class university quite different from Oxford and
Cambridge. While it certainly provided Steve with some of the specialized
science courses
that he was not able to get at Antioch, it also offered him a setting
in which he was finally able to integrate his politics with his academic
and social life. In the words of a very close Antioch friend who was also
studying
at Leeds, "He came out of himself." His commitment to civil rights
and the problems faced by the working classes really took hold. He
wrote political articles for local newspapers. His friend described
how the two
of them would stand on the street corner, eating fish and chips, and
talking politics with their working-class friends. These friends remained
an important
part of his life, and when in later years he returned to England to
visit Cambridge and Oxford, Steve would always look them up.
Steve once said that Antioch "made me what I am" (Discover, Jan.
1982). He was referring to the quality of teaching in this small liberal
arts college where the faculty were primarily concerned with teaching and
did not have the pressures to produce as in other larger institutions. In
1989 Steve wrote, "I'm persuaded by my own experience, and by
my observation of other alumni, that an Antioch education produces what we
want in graduate students and in citizens of our planet. Certainly, my own
field demands creativity -- going beyond the standard sources of wisdom.
Antioch pushes its students in that direction."
Steve graduated from Antioch in June, 1963. He ranked
first in his class of 196 students. After graduating, he returned to
teach Geology at
Antioch's summer session in 1966 and frequently spoke at annual commencements.
He maintained strong ties to several of his professors who provided
him with guidance, encouragement, and friendship.
I would like to close with a few last thoughts about
Steve -- his loyalty
to me and other old friends, his dedication to his family, his commitment
to just causes, and especially his tremendous optimism and enthusiasm about
life and the people in his life. He credited this optimism to his parents,
particularly his mother who is here today. This optimism overrode his personal
tragedies and gave him courage and strength through two bouts of cancer -- the
one he survived in 1983, and the one that took his life earlier this year.
On May 9th, 11 days before Steve died, we had dinner at my home -- Steve,
his mother Eleanor, and I. At that point, he was quite sick and was to start
chemotherapy the next day. He was in pain, and it was difficult for him to
walk. Nevertheless, he had just spent the week teaching his last class at
Harvard and flying to Washington and then to New York to read from his latest
book. During our dinner conversation, he was visibly tired, but he was his
old self -- attentive, animated, and engaged. He was all there. When
he left, I had no idea that I would not see him again.
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