Nonmoral Nature Stephen Jay Gould Summary

I, along with what I can only assume is 99% of the human population, have often found myself wondering why cruelty exists in a supposedly good world. If there is a benevolent God, why are there mosquitoes, which infect millions of people with malaria each year? Why are there dart frogs that produce poison potent enough to kill 10 grown men? Why is there the ichneumon fly, which injects its victims with eggs that eat the unfortunate victim from the inside out as they hatch? The ichneumon, which has stumped natural theologians for centuries, is the focus of “Nonmoral Nature” by Stephen Jay Gould. In his essay, Gould discusses the various methods that natural theologians use to transform the ichneumon’s “cruel” behavior into one that reflects benevolence, and why those natural theologians are wrong. Gould claims that we should not look for benevolence in nature because mankind’s anthropocentrism has led us to fabricate the idea that nature provides insight into human morality. About halfway through his essay, Gould transitions from a scientific description of ichneumon behavior to an analysis of the methods of natural theologians with the questions, “How then did [natural theologians] square the habits of these wasps with the goodness of God? How did they extract themselves from this dilemma of their own making” (15)? Gould’s choice to structure his essay by beginning with detailed descriptions of the ichneumon fly, then …show more content…
The anthropocentrism of man drives us to find answers to our own problems in unrelated places, like nature. But this search reveals that the seemingly cruel actions of animals do not carry any moral significance. The mosquito, the poison dart frog, and the infamous ichneumon do not exist to teach mankind how to act, they exist as all living things do, to continue the survival of their