Ataleoftwoworksites.docVIP

A Tale of Two Worksites Stephen Jay Gould Christopher Wren, the leading architect of Londons reconstruction after the great fire of 1666, lies buried beneath the floor of his most famous building, Saint Pauls Cathedral. No elaborate sarcophagus adorns the site. Instead, we find only the famous epitaph written by his son and now inscribed in the floor: si monumentum requiris, circumspice -- if you are searching for his monument, look around. A tad grandiose perhaps, but I have never read a finer testimony to the central importance one might even say sacredness -- of actual places, rather than replicas, symbols, or other forms of vicarious resemblance. An odd coincidence of professional life recently turned my thoughts to this most celebrated epitaph when, for the second time, I received an office in a spot loaded with history, a place still redolent with ghosts of past events both central to our common culture and especially meaningful for my own life and choices. In 1971, 1 spent an academic term as a visiting researcher at Oxford University. I received a cranny of office space on the upper floor of the University Museum. As I set up my books, fossil snails, and microscope, I noticed a metal plaque affixed to the wall, informing me that this reconfigured space of shelves and cubicles had been, originally, the site of the most famous public confrontation in the early history of Darwinism. On this very spot in 1860, just a few months after Darwin published the Origin of Species, T H. Huxley had drawn his rhetorical sword and soundly skewered the slick but superficial champion of creationism Bishop Soapy Sam Wilberforce. As with most legends, the official version ranks as mere cardboard before a much more complicated and multifaceted truth. Wilberforce and Huxley did put on a splendid and largely spontaneous show, but no clear victor emerged from the scuffle, and Joseph Hooker, Darwins other champion, made an even more effective reply to the bishop, since forgotten by