A new edition was published in 2007 to include Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory finished shortly before his death in 2002, and recent works by Dawkins.

(p. 65) In chapter 6, Sterelny notes that "despite the heat of some recent rhetoric, the same is true of the role of selection in generating evolutionary change", (p. 67) and naive adaptationism.

"Everyone accepts that many characteristics of organisms are not the direct result of selection", as in the example of redness of blood, which is a by-product of its oxygen-carrying properties.

77–78) "Gould, on the other hand, is inclined to bet that the array of possibilities open to a lineage is tightly restricted, often to minor variants of its current state."

(p. 78) Another difference is Dawkins conception of evolutionary biology's central problem as the explanation of adaptive complexity, whereas Gould has largely focused on the existence of large-scale patterns in the history of life that are not explained by natural selection.

For example, contemporary sex differences in human males and females need not be adaptations, but could be evolutionary vestiges of a greater sexual dimorphism in ancestral species.

But Gould's main target is 'extrapolationism', concerning the relationship between evolutionary processes occurring within species and those of large-scale life histories.

Secondly, in his Natural History writings, Gould often argued that the history of life was profoundly affected by mass extinctions caused by environmental catastrophes such as an asteroid impact causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out pterosaurs, large marine reptiles and non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

"The properties that are visible to selection and evolution in local populations—the extent to which an organism is suited to life here and now" become irrelevant to survival prospects in mass extinction times.

(p. 89) Thirdly, in Wonderful Life, Gould describes the Burgess Shale fauna, which is known in detail due to fortuitous preservation of both hard and soft tissue around 505 million years ago.

He argues that survival has been contingent, and that if the tape of life was replayed from the earliest Cambrian, with small alterations in the initial conditions, a different set of survivors may have evolved.

"Rather, Gould argues that this trend is really a change in the spread of variation within the horse lineage", which used to be species rich with a wide range of lifestyles and sizes.

First, in some early discussions of the idea, the contrast between geological and ecological time was blurred, with Gould and Eldredge interpreted as claiming that species originate more or less overnight in a single step.

(p. 96) Sterelny notes that despite the fact that the fossil record represents, for several reasons, a biased sample, "the consensus seems to be shifting Gould's way: the punctuated equilibrium pattern is common, perhaps even predominant".

(p. 100) Thus, while "Gould somewhat overstates the adherence of orthodoxy to strict extrapolationism", punctuated equilibrium is more important than some of the more "ungenerous treatment" that has been meted out.

About 543 million years ago, at the base of the Cambrian, the Ediacaran fauna, characterised by small shelly fossils, fossilised tracks, and burrows, apparently disappeared.

Molecular clock data cannot decide between gradual morphological change and rapid evolutionary bursts after initial species divergence.

(p. 129) Gould doubted that selection played much role in either the early burst of disparity, the post-Cambrian conservativeness of evolution, or the roster of loss and survival.

Biological classifications are thus evolutionary genealogies, where only monophyletic groups (e.g. genera, families, orders, classes, phyla) are recognised and named.

(p. 141) Finally, in chapter 11, Sterelny discusses the "evolutionary escalator", or the tendency over time for life on earth to show a progressive increase both in complexity and adaptivity.

(p. 149) Also, Dawkins thinks that evolution is progressive, not in an anthropocentric sense, but because over time life is becoming better adapted, although not in every aspect, as when local conditions change and organisms must move or readapt.

Dawkins pursues a similar, though less detailed, argument*[2] in discussing the evolution of evolvability, in which a series of 'watershed events' make new life forms possible.

(p. 153) In Chapter 12, Sterelny notes that "Dawkins and his allies really do have a different conception of evolution from that embraced by Eldredge, Lewontin and other collaborators of Gould", but that this does not explain the undercurrent of hostility generated in the debate, as illustrated by a series of exchanges in the New York Review of Books.

(p. 159) Recent ethical thinking has two approaches to this question, with perhaps the main contemporary argument being the 'expressivist' view that moral claims express the speaker's attitude towards some act or individual.

(p. 161) Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (first published in 1987) "locates the development of our conception of deep history in its cultural and intellectual context without any suggestion that that cultural context perverted the development of geology", whereas "in Wonderful Life, Gould argued that the Burgess Shale fauna were misunderstood because they were interpreted through the ideology of their discoverer".

But his general approach has gained some popularity, as illustrated by works which explore the interaction between cultural and biological evolution, such as Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd's Not By Genes Alone,[e].

Conversely, to Dawkins, knowledge of evolutionary underpinnings to human behaviour is potentially liberating, and "might even help us to escape the poisoned chalice of religion".

Extrapolationism is not a good theory, with large-scale patterns in the history of life not explainable by extrapolating from measurable events in local populations.

Further, species-level maintenance of sexual reproduction "has a problem: sex does not always promote evolvability", breaking up as well as creating advantageous gene combinations.

"But macroevolution is not just microevolution scaled up; Gould's paleontological perspective offers real insights into mass extinction and its consequences, and, perhaps, the nature of species and speciation".