Stephen J. Gould's greatest contribution to science is a revised version of the theory of evolution which offers today a useful framework for understanding progress in many evolutionary fields. His intuitions about the conjunction of evolution and development, the role of ecological factors in speciation, the multi-level interpretation of the units of selection, and the interplay between functional pressures and constraints all represent fruitful lines of experimental research. His opposition to the progressive representations of evolution, the gene-centered view of natural history, or the adaptationist "just-so stories" has also left its mark on current biology.

Part I: Evolutionary theory.- Niles Eldredge: Stephen J. Gould in the 1960s and 1970s, and the origin of "Punctuated Equilibria".- Elisabeth A. Lloyd: Stephen J. Gould and adaptation: San Marco 33 years later.- Telmo Pievani: Kinds of pluralism. Stephen J. Gould and the future of evolutionary theory.- Part II: Genome and development.- T. Ryan Gregory: Molecules and macroevolution: a Gouldian view of the genome.- Alessandro Minelli: Individuals, hierarchies and the levels of selection: a chapter in Stephen J. Gould's evolutionary theory.- Gerd B. Müller: Beyond spandrels: Stephen J. Gould, EvoDevo, and the extended synthesis.- Marcello Buiatti: Biological complexity and Punctuated Equilibria.- Part III The anthropological legacy.- Ian Tattersall: Stephen J. Gould's intellectual legacy to anthropology.- Guido Barbujani: Mismeasuring man thirty years later.- Klaus R. Scherer: Affect bursts as evolutionary precursors of speech and music.- Winfried Menninghaus: Darwin's theory of music, rhetoric and poetry.- Part IV: Stephen J. Gould and human sciences.- Andrea Cavazzini: Beyond (and without) the invisible hand. Conceptual shifts between economics and the theory of evolution.- Alberto Gualandi: Stephen J. Gould, between humanism and anti-humanism. Neoteny, exaptation and human science.