Editing Stephen Jay Gould (section)

===Cladistics===
Gould never embraced [[cladistics]] as a method of investigating evolutionary lineages and process, possibly because he was concerned that such investigations would lead to neglect of the details in historical biology, which he considered all-important. In the early 1990s this led him into a debate with [[Derek Briggs]], who had begun to apply quantitative cladistic techniques to the [[Burgess Shale]] fossils, about the methods to be used in interpreting these fossils.<ref>Gould, S. J. (1991). [http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/funmorph/raoul/macroevolutie/gould1991.pdf "The disparity of the Burgess Shale arthropod fauna and the limits of cladistic analysis".] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180127211824/http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/funmorph/raoul/macroevolutie/Gould1991.pdf |date=January 27, 2018 }} ''Paleobiology'' 17 (October): 411–423.</ref> Around this time cladistics rapidly became the dominant method of classification in evolutionary biology. Inexpensive but increasingly powerful personal computers made it possible to process large quantities of data about organisms and their characteristics. Around the same time the development of effective [[polymerase chain reaction]] techniques made it possible to apply cladistic methods of analysis to biochemical and genetic features as well.<ref>Baron, Christian and J. T. Høeg (2005). [https://books.google.com/books?id=LalmQ4346O0C&pg=PA3 "Gould, Scharm and the Paleontologocal Perspective in Evolutionary Biology".] In S. Koenemann and R.A. Jenner, ''Crustacea and Arthropod Relationships''. CRC Press. pp. 3–14. {{ISBN|0-8493-3498-5}}.</ref>