On Sat, 9 Feb 2008, Robt Mann wrote:

>
>>  Punctuated Equilibrium
>>  by Stephen Jay Gould
>>  Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 396 pp., $18.95 (paper)
>
>>  Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, "Punctuated Equilibria: An 
>> Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism," in > Models in Paleobiology, edited by 
>> T.J.M. Schopf (Freeman, Cooper, 1972).
>
> 	Something is significantly wonky if this misuse of the term 
> equilibrium has gone unchallenged.  The term means 'a state showing no 
> tendency to net change', and is one of the most central & valuable concepts 
> in physical chemistry as developed by J W Gibbs, Hinshelwood, etc, connecting 
> enthalpy, entropy, standard electrode potentials, etc in the mature chemical 
> thermodynamics as propounded in the main textbooks.  This term is not validly 
> used of the periods of admittedly very sluggish change between saltations in 
> evolution. These have not been periods of dynamic (let alone static) 
> equilibrium.
>
Funny, Robert-- even after your inveighing against the term "punctuated
equilibrium" I don't find it bad at all.  I am reminded of the perhaps
relevant dictum by an excellent physicist: Remember that all stable states
are really metastable states.
 			Chandler