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Q. Much of your book is about how the discoverer of Burgess fit his findings to reflect his beliefs. What makes you think your own beliefs have not colored your views of evolution?
A. Of course they have, but it is so hard to know. The reason you study history is that it is easy to get a fix on the social embeddedness of ideas that are no longer current. The only thing you can know with respect to your own view is that you can engage in a lot of vigilance and scrutiny so that you can try to identify your own biases. You hope that a consciousness of social embeddedness makes you more sensitive. So, yes, of course, the interpretations of the Burgess Shale are in part conditioned by what's happening in society. But there is also a basic factual issue. I think that the description of the anatomy of these organisms can be done with objectivity. It is how we interpret these animals, and what we say they mean for the history of life that is obviously subject to biased ways of thinking. But I do think there is a certain factuality about the anatomy of Burgess animals that has truly been discovered.
Q. Why is your work so popular?
A. It's the subject more than anything else. I often say there are about half a dozen scientific subjects that are immensely intriguing to people because they deal with fundamental issues that disturb us and cause us to wonder. Evolution is one of those subjects. It attempts, insofar as science can, to answer the questions of what our life means, and why we are here, and where we come from, and who we are related to, and what has happened through time, and what has been the history of this planet. These are questions that all thinking people have to ponder.