The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is Stephen Jay Gould's posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities in a scholarly discourse.
Employing the Greek proverb about the crafty cunning fox that devises many strategies versus the persistent hedgehog who knows but one effective strategy, Gould offers a study of the division between the two ways of knowing, attempting to debunk the...
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The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is Stephen Jay Gould's posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities in a scholarly discourse.
Employing the Greek proverb about the crafty cunning fox that devises many strategies versus the persistent hedgehog who knows but one effective strategy, Gould offers a study of the division between the two ways of knowing, attempting to debunk the commonly assumed inextricable conflict between science and the arts as the two falsely opposed realms of the pursuit of knowledge.
Gould prefers to focus on the commonalities between the humanities and the sciences, such as creative thinking and the psychology of transcendence and discovery. He discusses four historic periods in which the supposed Science Wars have been characterized falsely. In each case the strategy for either side has been to portray centrist members of the opposing camp with radical minority views of extremist straw men...
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