G is for Gould

Because there is nothing more infectious than the quirky particular intepreted in terms of a great, splendid, self-consistent unifying principle.

Because life is a story that we all make up as we go along, and not the unfolding of a plan, and there is nothing more exhilarating.

Because God, being inordinately-fond-of-beetles, is reflected in the mind of any man inordinately-fond-of-Bahamian-snails, be it ever so Marxist.

So what if the common crowd of evolutionary biologists considered him a pest?
The common crowd of theologians doubtless considered Chesterton a pest.
In the colour, the shape, and the fragrance of his writings, Stephen Jay Gould is even as Chesterton. How gloriously blue-and-gold and multiform is the world of Gould, reeking with all the spices of Asia!