Gould on species, metaphysics and macroevolution: A critical appraisal

•I critique Gould's views on species and macroevolution.•I question the entailment from macroevolutionary theses to ontology.•Gould's first order views and second order views are in tension.•There is no obvious way of resolving this tension.

Stephen Jay Gould's views on the ontology of species were an important plank of his revisionist program in evolutionary theory. In this paper I cast a critical eye over those views. I focus on three central aspects of Gould's views on species: the relation between the Darwinian and the metaphysical notions of individuality, the relation between the ontology of species and macroevolution, and the issue of contextualism and conventionalism about the metaphysics of species.