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The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould
"Nature is so wondrously complex and varied that almost anything possible does happen....I rejoice in [its] multifariousness and leave the chimera of certainty to politicians and preachers."—from Ever Since Darwin
Upon his death in 2002, Stephen Jay Gould stood at the pinnacle among observers of the natural world, recognized by Congress as a "living legend." His prodigious legacy—sixteen best-selling and prize-winning books, dozens of scientific papers, an unbroken series of three hundred essays in Natural History—combined to make Gould the most widely read science writer of our time. This indispensable collection of forty-eight pieces from his brilliant oeuvre includes selections from classics such as Ever Since Darwin and The Mismeasure of Man, plus articles and speeches never before published in book form.
This volume, the last that will bear his name, spotlights his elegance, depth, and sheer pleasure in our world—a true celebration of an extraordinary mind.
Upon his death in 2002, Stephen Jay Gould stood at the pinnacle among observers of the natural world, recognized by Congress as a "living legend." His prodigious legacy—sixteen best-selling and prize-winning books, dozens of scientific papers, an unbroken series of three hundred essays in Natural History—combined to make Gould the most widely read science writer of our time. This indispensable collection of forty-eight pieces from his brilliant oeuvre includes selections from classics such as Ever Since Darwin and The Mismeasure of Man, plus articles and speeches never before published in book form.
This volume, the last that will bear his name, spotlights his elegance, depth, and sheer pleasure in our world—a true celebration of an extraordinary mind.
672 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
47 people are currently reading
3074 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Jay Gould
193 books1,397 followersStephen Jay Gould was a prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Most of Gould's empirical research was on land snails. Gould helped develop the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which evolutionary stability is marked by instances of rapid change. He contributed to evolutionary developmental biology. In evolutionary theory, he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans, and evolutionary psychology. He campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two compatible, complementary fields, or "magisteria," whose authority does not overlap.
Many of Gould's essays were reprinted in collected volumes, such as Ever Since Darwin and The Panda's Thumb, while his popular treatises included books such as The Mismeasure of Man, Wonderful Life and Full House.
-Wikipedia
Most of Gould's empirical research was on land snails. Gould helped develop the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which evolutionary stability is marked by instances of rapid change. He contributed to evolutionary developmental biology. In evolutionary theory, he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans, and evolutionary psychology. He campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two compatible, complementary fields, or "magisteria," whose authority does not overlap.
Many of Gould's essays were reprinted in collected volumes, such as Ever Since Darwin and The Panda's Thumb, while his popular treatises included books such as The Mismeasure of Man, Wonderful Life and Full House.
-Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
March 29, 2009
Okay, so I had to skip at least one chapter because there was simply no way I was going to understand the terminology. Otherwise, this is a great collection, especially for someone like me who'd never read Gould before. His essays are eclectic and just amazing in the breadth of topics they cover. I learned a great deal about biology, evolution, paleontology, and the history of science. What an amazing perspective and fascination this man had with how science is done and how it has evolved. I didn't finish all the essays, but plan on going back to it, as well as reading more, because it's just a great example of a scientist making his work accessible and intersting.
December 5, 2024
Treasures on every page, and the sort of thing that makes me want to go out and buy up the rest of Gould's output to see what else lies there. His "Mismeasure of Man" is best savored in its entirety (which I've done).
October 3, 2009
"The Richness of Life", a selection of Stephen Jay Gould's prolific essays, is an excellent introduction to Gould's major works and thinking.
Those new to natural history would find this collection a useful anchor to navigate Gould's other works, for his careful attention to detail, even in his popular science books, can be daunting to beginners.
In Gould's works, he often begins by asking a very specific question, then in elucidating the mystery, illustrates a general concept.
"I have come to understand the power of treating generalities by particulars. It is no use writing a book on "the meaning of life" (though we all long to know the answers to such great questions, while rightly suspecting that true solutions no not exist!). But an essay on "the meaning of 0.400 hitting in baseball" can reach a genuine conclusion with surprisingly extensive relevance to such broad topics as the nature of trends, the meaning of excellence, and even (believe it or not) the constitution of natural reality. You have to sneak up on generalities, not assault them head-on. One of my favorite lines, from G.K. Chesterton, proclaims: "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." --- Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition, The Mismeasure of Man.
He takes pleasure in finding the historical origins of ideas and theories, quoting frequently from original sources ("I pride myself on always quoting from original sources [...:] I am no Latin scholar, but I can read and translate most works in this universal scientific language of Beringer's time." --- The lying stones of Marrakech). Where he doesn't quote, he describes elegantly in rich detail, such that one feels participant to the study.
At the same time, he gives sufficient modern information and analysis to help the reader understand the significance of the actions. This is well-illustrated in his essay "Worm for a century, and for all seasons" on Charles Darwin's last book, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits":
"Thus, we have three principles [for carrying out historical science:]. [...:] One may discuss these principles directly or recognize the 'little problems' that Darwin used to exemplify them: orchids, coral reefs, and worms."
"[In his treatise, Darwin:] uses two major types of arguments to convince us that worms form the vegetable mold. He first proves that worms are sufficiently numerous and widely spread in space and depth to do the job. He demonstrates 'what a vast number of worms live unseen by us beneath our feet' - some 53,767 per acre (or 356 pounds of worm) in good British soil. He then gathers evidence from informants throughout the world to argue that worms are far more widely distributed, and in greater range of apparently unfavorable environments, than we usually imagine. He digs to see how deeply they extend into the soil, and cuts one in two at fifty-five inches, although others report worms at eight feet down or more."
This approach means that there always is something new and interesting to look forward to in Gould's essays, even when you could predict his conclusion. And his general truths (like most general truths, are not particularly novel) do not seem trite, but are rather, rational extensions of his investigations.
__________________
"The Richness of Life" is divided into eight major section:
- Autobiography
- Biography (of other scientists)
- Evolutionary Theory
- Size, Form and Shape
- Stages and Sequences (of the notion of progress)
- Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology
- Racism, Scientific and Otherwise
- Religion
Each section begins with a helpful introductory passages by Steven Rose to understand the social circumstances of some of these debates.
Those new to natural history would find this collection a useful anchor to navigate Gould's other works, for his careful attention to detail, even in his popular science books, can be daunting to beginners.
In Gould's works, he often begins by asking a very specific question, then in elucidating the mystery, illustrates a general concept.
"I have come to understand the power of treating generalities by particulars. It is no use writing a book on "the meaning of life" (though we all long to know the answers to such great questions, while rightly suspecting that true solutions no not exist!). But an essay on "the meaning of 0.400 hitting in baseball" can reach a genuine conclusion with surprisingly extensive relevance to such broad topics as the nature of trends, the meaning of excellence, and even (believe it or not) the constitution of natural reality. You have to sneak up on generalities, not assault them head-on. One of my favorite lines, from G.K. Chesterton, proclaims: "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." --- Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition, The Mismeasure of Man.
He takes pleasure in finding the historical origins of ideas and theories, quoting frequently from original sources ("I pride myself on always quoting from original sources [...:] I am no Latin scholar, but I can read and translate most works in this universal scientific language of Beringer's time." --- The lying stones of Marrakech). Where he doesn't quote, he describes elegantly in rich detail, such that one feels participant to the study.
At the same time, he gives sufficient modern information and analysis to help the reader understand the significance of the actions. This is well-illustrated in his essay "Worm for a century, and for all seasons" on Charles Darwin's last book, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits":
"Thus, we have three principles [for carrying out historical science:]. [...:] One may discuss these principles directly or recognize the 'little problems' that Darwin used to exemplify them: orchids, coral reefs, and worms."
"[In his treatise, Darwin:] uses two major types of arguments to convince us that worms form the vegetable mold. He first proves that worms are sufficiently numerous and widely spread in space and depth to do the job. He demonstrates 'what a vast number of worms live unseen by us beneath our feet' - some 53,767 per acre (or 356 pounds of worm) in good British soil. He then gathers evidence from informants throughout the world to argue that worms are far more widely distributed, and in greater range of apparently unfavorable environments, than we usually imagine. He digs to see how deeply they extend into the soil, and cuts one in two at fifty-five inches, although others report worms at eight feet down or more."
This approach means that there always is something new and interesting to look forward to in Gould's essays, even when you could predict his conclusion. And his general truths (like most general truths, are not particularly novel) do not seem trite, but are rather, rational extensions of his investigations.
__________________
"The Richness of Life" is divided into eight major section:
- Autobiography
- Biography (of other scientists)
- Evolutionary Theory
- Size, Form and Shape
- Stages and Sequences (of the notion of progress)
- Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology
- Racism, Scientific and Otherwise
- Religion
Each section begins with a helpful introductory passages by Steven Rose to understand the social circumstances of some of these debates.
January 1, 2024
"The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould" is a collection of Gould's essays, mostly about evolution.
This is not a breezy book; even skipping, it took me months. Nevertheless, it is a rewarding book to anyone who is already past the basic misconceptions about evolution and wants to understand it in a little more detail.
If you still have doubts about evolution vs. creationism/"intelligent design", this may not be the book for you. If you think evolution is a process where individual organisms adapt to their changing environments, or if you think things like "since modern society rewards intelligence, humans will continue evolve into more intelligent beings", you will need a more basic book than this one.
Here are examples of a few misconceptions this book does tackle, and which resonated with my personal level of ignorance:
1. If a feature exists and has lasted for centuries, it must have some evolutionary advantage. (Perhaps a biologist would think this is a laughable misconception, but I've always thought it was plausible.)
2. Features have to develop very incrementally. So, it is not good enough to explain the advantage of some feature. In order to show that it was produced by evolution, one must also explain the evolutionary advantage of hypothetical features that must have existed and grown into the final feature.
3. Slow changes explain the bulk of evolution, and major cataclysms, warmings, coolings, asteroids, and so on only explain a small part of historical changes.
4. Natural variation is entirely random. Of course this could be true depending on the usage of "random". However, take Gould's example of a few islands where one could classify snails on the islands by two distinct patterns: A and B. One might think that the "A" types on the different islands all had a common ancestor, as did all the "B". However, in fact, they do not. The similar distinguishing factor evolved independently in the different populations. In a similar example, three types of Zebra, evolved their striping independently. [And, on an unrelated note, Zebras are white with black stripes, not black with white stripes.]
5. Evolution favors intelligence, and it is somewhat inevitable that humans would finally rise to become the dominant species.
On this last, Gould says that the typical "fish-to-mammals" charts gives us a false picture of evolution as a left-to-right movement. In fact, evolution often proceeds in the opposite direction: toward simpler forms.
He suggests a different visual model: something like a sphere formed from strands emanating from the center. There are organisms at all diameters of the sphere and they are all evolving, not just the ones that are furthest from the center. Also, each evolutionary step can go outward toward more complexity or inward toward simplicity. Even if we assume a equal probability of either, over time the sphere will increase in diameter, with complex organisms emerging, but the center of gravity (measured by number of species) will continue to stay fairly near the core.
This is not a breezy book; even skipping, it took me months. Nevertheless, it is a rewarding book to anyone who is already past the basic misconceptions about evolution and wants to understand it in a little more detail.
If you still have doubts about evolution vs. creationism/"intelligent design", this may not be the book for you. If you think evolution is a process where individual organisms adapt to their changing environments, or if you think things like "since modern society rewards intelligence, humans will continue evolve into more intelligent beings", you will need a more basic book than this one.
Here are examples of a few misconceptions this book does tackle, and which resonated with my personal level of ignorance:
1. If a feature exists and has lasted for centuries, it must have some evolutionary advantage. (Perhaps a biologist would think this is a laughable misconception, but I've always thought it was plausible.)
2. Features have to develop very incrementally. So, it is not good enough to explain the advantage of some feature. In order to show that it was produced by evolution, one must also explain the evolutionary advantage of hypothetical features that must have existed and grown into the final feature.
3. Slow changes explain the bulk of evolution, and major cataclysms, warmings, coolings, asteroids, and so on only explain a small part of historical changes.
4. Natural variation is entirely random. Of course this could be true depending on the usage of "random". However, take Gould's example of a few islands where one could classify snails on the islands by two distinct patterns: A and B. One might think that the "A" types on the different islands all had a common ancestor, as did all the "B". However, in fact, they do not. The similar distinguishing factor evolved independently in the different populations. In a similar example, three types of Zebra, evolved their striping independently. [And, on an unrelated note, Zebras are white with black stripes, not black with white stripes.]
5. Evolution favors intelligence, and it is somewhat inevitable that humans would finally rise to become the dominant species.
On this last, Gould says that the typical "fish-to-mammals" charts gives us a false picture of evolution as a left-to-right movement. In fact, evolution often proceeds in the opposite direction: toward simpler forms.
He suggests a different visual model: something like a sphere formed from strands emanating from the center. There are organisms at all diameters of the sphere and they are all evolving, not just the ones that are furthest from the center. Also, each evolutionary step can go outward toward more complexity or inward toward simplicity. Even if we assume a equal probability of either, over time the sphere will increase in diameter, with complex organisms emerging, but the center of gravity (measured by number of species) will continue to stay fairly near the core.
February 6, 2021
I would have given my right ear to be able to write like Gould; it is so effortless, so elegant, no matter what the topic is. Also, there is this warmness to the way he approaches things, which makes him very likable. He is the only popular science hero type I really like actually; the others all rub me off the wrong way (I'm a bit young for Carl Sagan, he might have been like this also).
That said, when he writes about stuff out of his expertise, he can get a bit carried away and has this tendency to jump to conclusions. Also, it sometimes feels like he is intentionally poking at people to create contention (maybe writing for so long in the public eye creates this habit); these aspects made the first two chapters of the book less likable. But then the rest of it (up until the religion part) is on his views on evolution and different aspects of evolutionary theory and they are mind-blowing (and still read just as smooth as a chapter out of Game of Thrones.... how can you do that!!!). I'm partial to his view of evolution and I like his open-mindedness.
As a scientist, there is one beef I have with this branch of science though-they make inferences with so little data that it is dangerous (most of the cautionary tales in the book are good examples of this). And I find his attempt at reconciling science/religion a well-meant, but slightly wishy-washy endeavor. Of course, there is no need for contention, but we do not need to slap each other's back; we just need to mind our own businesses. It is a great collection, particularly if you are not familiar with his writings and his theories.
That said, when he writes about stuff out of his expertise, he can get a bit carried away and has this tendency to jump to conclusions. Also, it sometimes feels like he is intentionally poking at people to create contention (maybe writing for so long in the public eye creates this habit); these aspects made the first two chapters of the book less likable. But then the rest of it (up until the religion part) is on his views on evolution and different aspects of evolutionary theory and they are mind-blowing (and still read just as smooth as a chapter out of Game of Thrones.... how can you do that!!!). I'm partial to his view of evolution and I like his open-mindedness.
As a scientist, there is one beef I have with this branch of science though-they make inferences with so little data that it is dangerous (most of the cautionary tales in the book are good examples of this). And I find his attempt at reconciling science/religion a well-meant, but slightly wishy-washy endeavor. Of course, there is no need for contention, but we do not need to slap each other's back; we just need to mind our own businesses. It is a great collection, particularly if you are not familiar with his writings and his theories.
May 22, 2022
I was looking forward to reading this book but I think I'm just not smart enough to appreciate it. His topics are varied and deep, the book is well organized, the essays are relatively short given the depth, his research is amazing ... I just am not smart enough!
Read
March 14, 2014A beautiful summary of a brilliant career, but make sure you have a few weeks available. It's engrossing, but unless you're a paleontologist, you'll struggle a bit.
December 24, 2024
A nice collection of essays, I've read some of them before. He did have a way with words, I'm sorry that he passed away so young, science needs explainers and defenders now more than ever now that we are being overrun by MAGA morons.
June 16, 2024
A MARVELOUS COLLECTION OF GOULD’S MANY WRITINGS
Editors Paul McGarr and Steven Rose noted in the first preface to this 2006 collection, “Steve Gould was neither overly forthcoming in writing about his own life, nor especially reticent. There is no formal autobiography, but his essays are peppered almost parenthetically with personal references and anecdotes. Reading them, one learns of his parents and grandparents, his New York Jewish upbringing, student mentors, and his direct engagement in some of the great biological and social controversies of the day, from scientific racism to creationism. There is no mistaking his passion for baseball. His reaction to being diagnosed with cancer resulted in one of his most memorable essays. Yet on the loves of his life, and on his children, he is silent.” (Pg. 13)
Gould states, “It has become… a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to live and a time to die---and when my own skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy---and I find nothing reproachable to those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.” (Pg. 30)
He comments on the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’: “Contrary to the [Inherit the Wind] play, Scopes was not persecuted by Bible thumpers, and never spent a second in jail. The trial did have its epic moments… in the most famous episode, when Judge Raulston… allowed [Clarence] Darrow to put [William Jennings] Bryan on the stand… But the usual reading of the trial as an epic struggle between benighted Yahooism and resplendent virtue simple cannot suffice---however strongly this impression has been fostered both by Inherit the Wind and by the famous reporting of H.L. Mencken… Scopes was recruited for a particular job---both by the ACLU and by Dayton fundamentalists, who saw the trial as an otherwise unobtainable opportunity to put their little town ‘on the map���… the ACLU sought an unproblematical conviction, designated for appeal to a higher court… Darrow did bring several eminent scientists to testify, and the judge did refuse to let them take the stand. In so deciding, [the judge was] … making a proper ruling that his court could judge Scopes’s guilt or innocence only under the given statute---and Scopes was guilty as charged---not the legitimacy or constitutionality of the law itself…. Darrow may have come out slightly ahead, but Bryan parried fairly well, and certainly didn’t embarrass himself. The most celebrated moment---when Darrow supposedly forced Bryan to admit that the days of creation might have spanned more than twenty-four hours---represented Bryan’s free-will statement about his … well-known personal beliefs… Bryan did indeed drop dead of heart failure in Dayton… a week later, after stuffing himself at a church dinner… Scopes’s conviction was overturned on a technicality---an outcome that … was actually a bitter procedural defeat that stalled the real purpose… to test the law’s constitutionality.” (Pg. 50-51)
He points out, “We misidentify the protagonists of this battle in the worst possible way when we depict evolution versus creationism as a major skirmish in a general war between science and religion. Almost all scientists and almost all religious leaders have joined forces ON THE SAME SIDE---against the creationists. And the chief theme of this book [‘Rocks of Ages’]… [is] the call for respectful and supportive dialogue between the two distinct magisterial, each inhabiting a major mansion of human life.” (Pg. 57)
He acknowledges, “I know from my own experience as a participant in major scientific debates that the explicit record of publication is utterly hopeless as a source of insight about shifts, forays, and resolutions… scientific papers are polite or self-serving fictions in their statements about doing science; they are, at best, logical reconstructions after the fact, written under the conceit that fact and argument shape conclusions by their own inexorable demands of reason. Levels of interacting complexity, contradictory motives… all combine to shape this most complex style of human knowledge.” (Pg. 136)
He explains, “Darwin… developed the interestingly paradoxical resolution that has been orthodox ever since … If complexity precludes sudden origin, and the dilemma of incipient stages forbids gradual development in functional continuity, then how can we ever get from here to there? Darwin replies that we must reject … the notion of functional continuity. We will all freely grant that no creature can fly with 2 percent of a wing, but why must the incipient stages be used for flight? If incipient stages originally performed a different function… natural selection might superintend their increase as adaptations for this original role until they reached a stage suitable for their current use… This principle of functional change in structural continuity represents Darwin’s elegant solution to the dilemma of incipient stages.” (Pg. 146-147)
Of course, Gould also suggested that Catholic priest/scientist Teilhard de Chardin participated in the Piltdown Man hoax, “as a joke that went too far, not as a malicious attempt to defraud…. What an irresistible idea---to salt English soil with this preposterous combination of a human skull and an ape’s jaw and we what the pros could make of it. But the joke quickly went sour… The war broke out… Then [Charles] Dawson died in 1916… What could Teilhard say by the war’s end? Dawson could not corroborate his story.” (Pg. 202-203) [Gould’s essays on this topic are reprinted in ‘The Panda’s Thumb’ and ‘Hen’s Teeth,’ but in his final ‘summary’ work, ‘The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,’ he doesn’t mention Piltdown Man, and only refers to Teilhard incidentally as a ‘theistic evolutionist’; so hopefully, he finally gave up on this speculative and much-criticized theory.]
He asserts, “[I] wish to argue that our conventional desire to view history as progressive, and to see humans as predictably dominant, has grossly distorted our interpretation of life’s pathway by falsely placing in the center of things a relatively minor phenomenon that arises only as a side consequence of a physically constrained starting point. The most salient feature of life has been the stability of its bacterial mode from the beginning of the fossil record today and, with little doubt, into all future time so long as the earth endures. This is truly the ‘age of bacteria’…” (Pg. 213-214)
He admits, “we do not exaggerate greatly in stating that the subsequent history of animal life amounts to little more than variations on anatomical themes established during the Cambrian explosion within five million years… We do not know why the Cambrian explosion could establish all major anatomical designs so quickly. An ‘external’ explanation based on ecology seems attractive… But an ‘internal’ explanation based on genetics and development also seems necessary…” (Pg. 216-217)
He points out, “Randomness is a part of Darwinian theory, but it has a very definite and restricted role… It operates only in the genesis of raw material---genetic variation. It plays no role at all in the production of evolutionary change---the selective preservation of a portion of this variation to build altered organisms. Critics of Darwinism… have often misunderstood this central tenet of Darwinism… But they fail to understand that Darwinism invokes randomness only to generate raw material. It agrees with the critics in arguing that the world’s order could only be produced by a conventional deterministic cause---natural selection in this case.” (Pg. 223-224)
He proposes, “our new ideas about the importance of randomness in evolutionary change---particularly at the highest level of mass extinction… strongly suggest that we must view the evolution of human consciousness as a lucky accident that occurred only by the fortunate (for us) concatenation of numerous improbabilities.” (Pg. 229)
He acknowledges, “We originally, and probably wrongly, tried to validate punctuated equilibrium by asserting that, in principle, most evolutionary change should be concentrated at events of speciation themselves. Subsequent work in evolutionary biology has not confirmed any a priori preference for concatenation in such episodes. D.J. Futuyama’s … argument… offers a far richer, far more interesting, and theoretically justified rationale for correlating episodes of evolutionary change with speciation.” (Pg. 244)
He suggests, “Catastrophic mass extinction… may suggest an overly simplified and dichotomous macroevolutionary model based on alternating regimes of ‘background’ vs. ‘mass’ extinction. Rather, we should expand this insight … into a more general model… with conventional Darwinian microevolution dominating at the evolutionary tier of short times… punctuated equilibrium dominating at the geological tier of phyletic trends based on interspecies dynamics… and mass extinction… acting as a major force of overall macroevolutionary pattern in the global history of relative waxing and waning of clades.” (Pg. 259)
Famously, he notes, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference… not the evidence of fossils… We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.” (Pg. 263) Later, he comments, “Consider… the evolutionary ladder of horses… yes… modern horses are bigger, with fewer toes and higher crowned teeth. But Hyracotherium-Equus is not a ladder… This particular sequence is but one labyrinthine pathway among thousands on a complex bush. This particular route has achieved prominence for just one ironic reason---because all other twigs are extinct.” (Pg. 367)
He asks, “does all the rest of evolution … flow by simple extrapolation from selection’s power to create the good design of organisms? Does the force that makes a functional eye also explain why the world houses more than 500,000 species of beetles and fewer than fifty species of priapulid worms… Or why ruling dinosaurs died and subordinate mammals survived to flourish and… evolve a creature capable of building cities and understanding natural selection?” (Pg. 448) Later, he argues, “Reading and writing are now highly adaptive for humans, but the mental machinery for these crucial capacities must have originated … [and] were co-opted later, for the brain reached its current size and conformation tens of thousands of years before any human invented reading and writing.” (Pg. 455)
Gould’s death was a huge, irreplaceable loss to evolutionary science, but also to WRITING about evolutionary science. This book is an excellent selection of his best work, and will be “must reading” even for those of us who have read all of his books.
Editors Paul McGarr and Steven Rose noted in the first preface to this 2006 collection, “Steve Gould was neither overly forthcoming in writing about his own life, nor especially reticent. There is no formal autobiography, but his essays are peppered almost parenthetically with personal references and anecdotes. Reading them, one learns of his parents and grandparents, his New York Jewish upbringing, student mentors, and his direct engagement in some of the great biological and social controversies of the day, from scientific racism to creationism. There is no mistaking his passion for baseball. His reaction to being diagnosed with cancer resulted in one of his most memorable essays. Yet on the loves of his life, and on his children, he is silent.” (Pg. 13)
Gould states, “It has become… a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to live and a time to die---and when my own skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy---and I find nothing reproachable to those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.” (Pg. 30)
He comments on the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’: “Contrary to the [Inherit the Wind] play, Scopes was not persecuted by Bible thumpers, and never spent a second in jail. The trial did have its epic moments… in the most famous episode, when Judge Raulston… allowed [Clarence] Darrow to put [William Jennings] Bryan on the stand… But the usual reading of the trial as an epic struggle between benighted Yahooism and resplendent virtue simple cannot suffice---however strongly this impression has been fostered both by Inherit the Wind and by the famous reporting of H.L. Mencken… Scopes was recruited for a particular job---both by the ACLU and by Dayton fundamentalists, who saw the trial as an otherwise unobtainable opportunity to put their little town ‘on the map���… the ACLU sought an unproblematical conviction, designated for appeal to a higher court… Darrow did bring several eminent scientists to testify, and the judge did refuse to let them take the stand. In so deciding, [the judge was] … making a proper ruling that his court could judge Scopes’s guilt or innocence only under the given statute---and Scopes was guilty as charged---not the legitimacy or constitutionality of the law itself…. Darrow may have come out slightly ahead, but Bryan parried fairly well, and certainly didn’t embarrass himself. The most celebrated moment---when Darrow supposedly forced Bryan to admit that the days of creation might have spanned more than twenty-four hours---represented Bryan’s free-will statement about his … well-known personal beliefs… Bryan did indeed drop dead of heart failure in Dayton… a week later, after stuffing himself at a church dinner… Scopes’s conviction was overturned on a technicality---an outcome that … was actually a bitter procedural defeat that stalled the real purpose… to test the law’s constitutionality.” (Pg. 50-51)
He points out, “We misidentify the protagonists of this battle in the worst possible way when we depict evolution versus creationism as a major skirmish in a general war between science and religion. Almost all scientists and almost all religious leaders have joined forces ON THE SAME SIDE---against the creationists. And the chief theme of this book [‘Rocks of Ages’]… [is] the call for respectful and supportive dialogue between the two distinct magisterial, each inhabiting a major mansion of human life.” (Pg. 57)
He acknowledges, “I know from my own experience as a participant in major scientific debates that the explicit record of publication is utterly hopeless as a source of insight about shifts, forays, and resolutions… scientific papers are polite or self-serving fictions in their statements about doing science; they are, at best, logical reconstructions after the fact, written under the conceit that fact and argument shape conclusions by their own inexorable demands of reason. Levels of interacting complexity, contradictory motives… all combine to shape this most complex style of human knowledge.” (Pg. 136)
He explains, “Darwin… developed the interestingly paradoxical resolution that has been orthodox ever since … If complexity precludes sudden origin, and the dilemma of incipient stages forbids gradual development in functional continuity, then how can we ever get from here to there? Darwin replies that we must reject … the notion of functional continuity. We will all freely grant that no creature can fly with 2 percent of a wing, but why must the incipient stages be used for flight? If incipient stages originally performed a different function… natural selection might superintend their increase as adaptations for this original role until they reached a stage suitable for their current use… This principle of functional change in structural continuity represents Darwin’s elegant solution to the dilemma of incipient stages.” (Pg. 146-147)
Of course, Gould also suggested that Catholic priest/scientist Teilhard de Chardin participated in the Piltdown Man hoax, “as a joke that went too far, not as a malicious attempt to defraud…. What an irresistible idea---to salt English soil with this preposterous combination of a human skull and an ape’s jaw and we what the pros could make of it. But the joke quickly went sour… The war broke out… Then [Charles] Dawson died in 1916… What could Teilhard say by the war’s end? Dawson could not corroborate his story.” (Pg. 202-203) [Gould’s essays on this topic are reprinted in ‘The Panda’s Thumb’ and ‘Hen’s Teeth,’ but in his final ‘summary’ work, ‘The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,’ he doesn’t mention Piltdown Man, and only refers to Teilhard incidentally as a ‘theistic evolutionist’; so hopefully, he finally gave up on this speculative and much-criticized theory.]
He asserts, “[I] wish to argue that our conventional desire to view history as progressive, and to see humans as predictably dominant, has grossly distorted our interpretation of life’s pathway by falsely placing in the center of things a relatively minor phenomenon that arises only as a side consequence of a physically constrained starting point. The most salient feature of life has been the stability of its bacterial mode from the beginning of the fossil record today and, with little doubt, into all future time so long as the earth endures. This is truly the ‘age of bacteria’…” (Pg. 213-214)
He admits, “we do not exaggerate greatly in stating that the subsequent history of animal life amounts to little more than variations on anatomical themes established during the Cambrian explosion within five million years… We do not know why the Cambrian explosion could establish all major anatomical designs so quickly. An ‘external’ explanation based on ecology seems attractive… But an ‘internal’ explanation based on genetics and development also seems necessary…” (Pg. 216-217)
He points out, “Randomness is a part of Darwinian theory, but it has a very definite and restricted role… It operates only in the genesis of raw material---genetic variation. It plays no role at all in the production of evolutionary change---the selective preservation of a portion of this variation to build altered organisms. Critics of Darwinism… have often misunderstood this central tenet of Darwinism… But they fail to understand that Darwinism invokes randomness only to generate raw material. It agrees with the critics in arguing that the world’s order could only be produced by a conventional deterministic cause---natural selection in this case.” (Pg. 223-224)
He proposes, “our new ideas about the importance of randomness in evolutionary change---particularly at the highest level of mass extinction… strongly suggest that we must view the evolution of human consciousness as a lucky accident that occurred only by the fortunate (for us) concatenation of numerous improbabilities.” (Pg. 229)
He acknowledges, “We originally, and probably wrongly, tried to validate punctuated equilibrium by asserting that, in principle, most evolutionary change should be concentrated at events of speciation themselves. Subsequent work in evolutionary biology has not confirmed any a priori preference for concatenation in such episodes. D.J. Futuyama’s … argument… offers a far richer, far more interesting, and theoretically justified rationale for correlating episodes of evolutionary change with speciation.” (Pg. 244)
He suggests, “Catastrophic mass extinction… may suggest an overly simplified and dichotomous macroevolutionary model based on alternating regimes of ‘background’ vs. ‘mass’ extinction. Rather, we should expand this insight … into a more general model… with conventional Darwinian microevolution dominating at the evolutionary tier of short times… punctuated equilibrium dominating at the geological tier of phyletic trends based on interspecies dynamics… and mass extinction… acting as a major force of overall macroevolutionary pattern in the global history of relative waxing and waning of clades.” (Pg. 259)
Famously, he notes, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference… not the evidence of fossils… We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.” (Pg. 263) Later, he comments, “Consider… the evolutionary ladder of horses… yes… modern horses are bigger, with fewer toes and higher crowned teeth. But Hyracotherium-Equus is not a ladder… This particular sequence is but one labyrinthine pathway among thousands on a complex bush. This particular route has achieved prominence for just one ironic reason---because all other twigs are extinct.” (Pg. 367)
He asks, “does all the rest of evolution … flow by simple extrapolation from selection’s power to create the good design of organisms? Does the force that makes a functional eye also explain why the world houses more than 500,000 species of beetles and fewer than fifty species of priapulid worms… Or why ruling dinosaurs died and subordinate mammals survived to flourish and… evolve a creature capable of building cities and understanding natural selection?” (Pg. 448) Later, he argues, “Reading and writing are now highly adaptive for humans, but the mental machinery for these crucial capacities must have originated … [and] were co-opted later, for the brain reached its current size and conformation tens of thousands of years before any human invented reading and writing.” (Pg. 455)
Gould’s death was a huge, irreplaceable loss to evolutionary science, but also to WRITING about evolutionary science. This book is an excellent selection of his best work, and will be “must reading” even for those of us who have read all of his books.
July 4, 2023
Come for the passionate anti-racism, stay for the in-depth discussion of snail shells.
August 20, 2025
I read The Richness of Life during the Diwali vacations last year, and in hindsight it was the perfect season for it—lanterns glowing outside, firecrackers punctuating the night sky, and Gould’s voice in my head offering both sparks of wit and bursts of illumination.
This anthology brings together the best of his essays, lectures, and reflections, a life’s worth of intellectual fireworks bound between covers.
What struck me first was the sheer generosity of Gould’s mind. He doesn’t write like a specialist guarding a narrow turf; he writes like someone who delights in sharing connections across disciplines. One moment he’s digging into paleontology, the next he’s reflecting on baseball statistics, Renaissance art, or odd quirks of natural history.
Reading him felt like walking through a grand bazaar of ideas, each stall offering some surprising gem. It wasn’t just science—it was culture, philosophy, history, and a very human curiosity woven together.
The foreword by Oliver Sacks set the tone beautifully, framing Gould as a public intellectual who made science not just comprehensible but deeply meaningful. I could see why: Gould never wrote as if he were dumbing things down. Instead, he assumed the reader was capable of joy in complexity, capable of delight in detail. That trust in the reader is rare, and I felt it page after page.
One of the pieces that lingered with me was Gould’s insistence on imperfection as a driving force in evolution. He never tired of showing how nature cobbles things together, tinkering rather than engineering. The panda’s false thumb, the quirks of snails, and the accidents of morphology—these became parables about resilience and creativity. It made me realise that to see imperfection as failure is to miss the beauty of how life actually works.
Another thread that ran through the anthology was his resistance to seeing evolution as a ladder of progress. Again and again, he reminds us: we are not nature’s pinnacle, just one improbable twig on a sprawling tree. Reading this during Diwali, amid rituals about renewal and destiny, I found myself reflecting on the irony that our culture so often insists on cosmic purpose, while science whispers of contingency and chance.
Gould’s message wasn’t nihilistic—it was, strangely, hopeful. If life is fragile, accidental, and diverse, then it is all the more precious.
Stylistically, Gould is both dense and playful. Some essays required slow reading; his arguments were layered, his references broad. But there were also moments of humour, sudden metaphors that cracked open the science and made it gleam. He had a way of making fossils speak, statistics tell stories, and history breathe. As I read through the selections, I felt less like I was trudging through a “collected works” and more like I was in conversation with a restless, endlessly curious mind.
By the time I finished the book, I understood why the editor titled it The Richness of Life. It’s not only about the richness of life on Earth—its diversity, oddities, and persistence—but also about the richness of a life devoted to thought.
Gould’s writing embodies an intellectual abundance that refuses to separate science from the broader human story. He shows us that understanding fossils or evolutionary debates is not a specialist pursuit—it’s part of being alive and aware in this world.
When I think back to that Diwali vacation, I remember two kinds of light: the literal lamps and sparklers and the metaphorical glow of Gould’s words. He made science feel like an act of celebration, a festival of the mind.
For me, The Richness of Life was less a book than a companion across those days—challenging, entertaining, and ultimately inspiring. It reminded me that curiosity is itself a kind of festivity, and Gould was one of its greatest hosts.
This anthology brings together the best of his essays, lectures, and reflections, a life’s worth of intellectual fireworks bound between covers.
What struck me first was the sheer generosity of Gould’s mind. He doesn’t write like a specialist guarding a narrow turf; he writes like someone who delights in sharing connections across disciplines. One moment he’s digging into paleontology, the next he’s reflecting on baseball statistics, Renaissance art, or odd quirks of natural history.
Reading him felt like walking through a grand bazaar of ideas, each stall offering some surprising gem. It wasn’t just science—it was culture, philosophy, history, and a very human curiosity woven together.
The foreword by Oliver Sacks set the tone beautifully, framing Gould as a public intellectual who made science not just comprehensible but deeply meaningful. I could see why: Gould never wrote as if he were dumbing things down. Instead, he assumed the reader was capable of joy in complexity, capable of delight in detail. That trust in the reader is rare, and I felt it page after page.
One of the pieces that lingered with me was Gould’s insistence on imperfection as a driving force in evolution. He never tired of showing how nature cobbles things together, tinkering rather than engineering. The panda’s false thumb, the quirks of snails, and the accidents of morphology—these became parables about resilience and creativity. It made me realise that to see imperfection as failure is to miss the beauty of how life actually works.
Another thread that ran through the anthology was his resistance to seeing evolution as a ladder of progress. Again and again, he reminds us: we are not nature’s pinnacle, just one improbable twig on a sprawling tree. Reading this during Diwali, amid rituals about renewal and destiny, I found myself reflecting on the irony that our culture so often insists on cosmic purpose, while science whispers of contingency and chance.
Gould’s message wasn’t nihilistic—it was, strangely, hopeful. If life is fragile, accidental, and diverse, then it is all the more precious.
Stylistically, Gould is both dense and playful. Some essays required slow reading; his arguments were layered, his references broad. But there were also moments of humour, sudden metaphors that cracked open the science and made it gleam. He had a way of making fossils speak, statistics tell stories, and history breathe. As I read through the selections, I felt less like I was trudging through a “collected works” and more like I was in conversation with a restless, endlessly curious mind.
By the time I finished the book, I understood why the editor titled it The Richness of Life. It’s not only about the richness of life on Earth—its diversity, oddities, and persistence—but also about the richness of a life devoted to thought.
Gould’s writing embodies an intellectual abundance that refuses to separate science from the broader human story. He shows us that understanding fossils or evolutionary debates is not a specialist pursuit—it’s part of being alive and aware in this world.
When I think back to that Diwali vacation, I remember two kinds of light: the literal lamps and sparklers and the metaphorical glow of Gould’s words. He made science feel like an act of celebration, a festival of the mind.
For me, The Richness of Life was less a book than a companion across those days—challenging, entertaining, and ultimately inspiring. It reminded me that curiosity is itself a kind of festivity, and Gould was one of its greatest hosts.
September 18, 2024
”What options are left in the face of geology's most frightening fact? Only two, really. We may, as this book advocates, accept the implications and learn to seek the meaning of human life, including the source of morality, in other, more appropriate, domains - either stoically with a sense of loss, or with joy in the challenge if our temperament be optimistic. Or we may continue to seek cosmic comfort in nature by reading life's history in a distorted light.
If we elect the second strategy, our maneuvers are severely restricted by our geological history. When we infested all but the first five days of time, the history of life could easily be rendered in our terms. But if we wish to assert human centrality in a world that functioned without us until the last moment, we must somehow grasp all that came before as a grand preparation, a foreshadowing of our eventual origin.”
If we elect the second strategy, our maneuvers are severely restricted by our geological history. When we infested all but the first five days of time, the history of life could easily be rendered in our terms. But if we wish to assert human centrality in a world that functioned without us until the last moment, we must somehow grasp all that came before as a grand preparation, a foreshadowing of our eventual origin.”
April 1, 2023
A superlative series of essays each with the undertone of evolutionary biology. Gould provides a counter to the ultra-Darwinism promulgated by Dawkins and Dennett (among others), delivering a persistently fresh, rewarding, and enjoyable series of insights into the history of evolutionary biology (and, to a lesser extent, the history of baseball).
December 12, 2009
I've always been a fan of Stephen Jay Gould, so The Richness of Life was an immediate must-read for me, even though it collects a lot of material that I've already read in one form or another. But mutation, hybridization, and transformation are all parts of the evolutionary process, right? So why wouldn't I want to see the essays and chapters that I'd read before genetically recombined in this newly collected body of work? (And besides, any writing that's only worth reading once wasn't really worth reading in the first place.)
Paul McGarr and Steven Rose had a pretty daunting task in front of them — culling an intelligible collection of 'hits' from around 22 books and essay collections is no easy task — but they've managed to put together a selection that works well on a thematic level and that covers the major themes of Gould's intellectual and scientific pursuits about as thoroughly as possible within the confines of a 600 page book. The eight thematic sections that the book is divided into are 1) Autobiography, 2) Biographies, 3) Evolutionary Theory, 4) Size, Form, and Shape, 5) Stages and Sequences, 6) Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology, 7) Racism, Scientific and Otherwise, and 8) Religion. The only thing I thought might make this an even better collection would be an added appendix that included a layperson's dictionary of the central scientific terms at work across Gould's essays.
Gould does a fantastic job of recreating scientific points of view that have been historically superseded so that we can see what's interesting about the thinking behind them even though it may have been a fundamentally incorrect mode of thinking. He also investigates the biographies of scientific thinkers and makes interesting connections between history, biography, and the various forms that scientific thinking has taken. He has a brilliant essay on Cuvier's belief in the fixity of species and on geological catastrophism (i.e. Noah's flood) and how despite these beliefs Cuvier was a masterful empiricist who essentially invented paleontology as we know it today. An equally brilliant essay discusses the importance of Darwin's fascination with worms and the way in which observing worms helped him to understand the extent of radical change that could take place over long periods of time via processes that were almost too slow to observe at the immediate level of human temporal perception. In addition to his more important work of debunking the bad science of early race theorists and eugenicists, Gould also does a great job of investigating things like home run records and the "evolution of the chocolate bar" using statistical analysis .
Where I think Gould is at his best, however, is at presenting an account of evolution that allows us to see it at work in all of its non-teleological glory. One of the problems about thinking about evolution is that its so hard for the mind to get beyond "just-so" stories that posit 'the ability to eat the leaves off of tall trees' as the 'reason' for the giraffe's long neck. Even though we may know that the neck derives ultimately from a process of random mutation and natural selection and that the neck survives as a trait because it was accidentally successful, we still have a tendency to reverse cause and effect. Gould is excellent at writing in such a way that the mind begins to get away from the 'just-so' habit, instead seeing evolution for the incredible process that it really is. Gould presents an image for us of what I might call "the miracle of the non-teleogical world"; i.e. Gould insists that a proper understanding of evolutionary theory does not make the world a less miraculous place, but rather it makes it even more miraculous since the chain of events that is necessary to produce any individual life form is staggering. Likewise, the statistical probability of any particular life form coming into being is so vast that the fact that we're sitting in the middle of such a huge variety of randomly generated life forms is in itself a cause for momentous wonder.
I thought about that this morning as I sliced a breakfast kiwi open. I've always thought that the shape of the round kiwi seed ring that you seen when you cut the kiwi open across the short axis of its body is one of the most beautiful things available to the eye. The tone of green and yellow and the specs of black that seem to float like a firework in mid-explosion have always struck me as gorgeous. And yet the reasons for the form that the evolution of the kiwi has taken have absolutely nothing to do with me. This aesthetic thrill that I have every time I eat a kiwi is nothing but pure accident. Not only does the kiwi's seed distribution have nothing to do with me, but the way my eye has evolved to find certain geometric patterns and forms inherently pleasing has almost nothing to do with those seeds in the kiwi. And yet all of this accident comes together in a breakfast moment that is always pleasing and aesthetically full for me. What luck that such a chance pairing could be formed, out of all the probabilities that have lurked in the depths of time.
Paul McGarr and Steven Rose had a pretty daunting task in front of them — culling an intelligible collection of 'hits' from around 22 books and essay collections is no easy task — but they've managed to put together a selection that works well on a thematic level and that covers the major themes of Gould's intellectual and scientific pursuits about as thoroughly as possible within the confines of a 600 page book. The eight thematic sections that the book is divided into are 1) Autobiography, 2) Biographies, 3) Evolutionary Theory, 4) Size, Form, and Shape, 5) Stages and Sequences, 6) Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology, 7) Racism, Scientific and Otherwise, and 8) Religion. The only thing I thought might make this an even better collection would be an added appendix that included a layperson's dictionary of the central scientific terms at work across Gould's essays.
Gould does a fantastic job of recreating scientific points of view that have been historically superseded so that we can see what's interesting about the thinking behind them even though it may have been a fundamentally incorrect mode of thinking. He also investigates the biographies of scientific thinkers and makes interesting connections between history, biography, and the various forms that scientific thinking has taken. He has a brilliant essay on Cuvier's belief in the fixity of species and on geological catastrophism (i.e. Noah's flood) and how despite these beliefs Cuvier was a masterful empiricist who essentially invented paleontology as we know it today. An equally brilliant essay discusses the importance of Darwin's fascination with worms and the way in which observing worms helped him to understand the extent of radical change that could take place over long periods of time via processes that were almost too slow to observe at the immediate level of human temporal perception. In addition to his more important work of debunking the bad science of early race theorists and eugenicists, Gould also does a great job of investigating things like home run records and the "evolution of the chocolate bar" using statistical analysis .
Where I think Gould is at his best, however, is at presenting an account of evolution that allows us to see it at work in all of its non-teleological glory. One of the problems about thinking about evolution is that its so hard for the mind to get beyond "just-so" stories that posit 'the ability to eat the leaves off of tall trees' as the 'reason' for the giraffe's long neck. Even though we may know that the neck derives ultimately from a process of random mutation and natural selection and that the neck survives as a trait because it was accidentally successful, we still have a tendency to reverse cause and effect. Gould is excellent at writing in such a way that the mind begins to get away from the 'just-so' habit, instead seeing evolution for the incredible process that it really is. Gould presents an image for us of what I might call "the miracle of the non-teleogical world"; i.e. Gould insists that a proper understanding of evolutionary theory does not make the world a less miraculous place, but rather it makes it even more miraculous since the chain of events that is necessary to produce any individual life form is staggering. Likewise, the statistical probability of any particular life form coming into being is so vast that the fact that we're sitting in the middle of such a huge variety of randomly generated life forms is in itself a cause for momentous wonder.
I thought about that this morning as I sliced a breakfast kiwi open. I've always thought that the shape of the round kiwi seed ring that you seen when you cut the kiwi open across the short axis of its body is one of the most beautiful things available to the eye. The tone of green and yellow and the specs of black that seem to float like a firework in mid-explosion have always struck me as gorgeous. And yet the reasons for the form that the evolution of the kiwi has taken have absolutely nothing to do with me. This aesthetic thrill that I have every time I eat a kiwi is nothing but pure accident. Not only does the kiwi's seed distribution have nothing to do with me, but the way my eye has evolved to find certain geometric patterns and forms inherently pleasing has almost nothing to do with those seeds in the kiwi. And yet all of this accident comes together in a breakfast moment that is always pleasing and aesthetically full for me. What luck that such a chance pairing could be formed, out of all the probabilities that have lurked in the depths of time.
September 7, 2017
Gould speaks expertly of statistics and uses classic literature examples as a framing device to convey his message: Enjoy Yourself, It's Later than You Think!
[props to Louis Prima.]
[props to Louis Prima.]
August 23, 2019
I only give four stars because I've already read most of these articles in Gould's previous book. A first-time reader of Stephen Jay Gould would probably give it a five.
December 17, 2022
Gould’s prose is too wordy and obtuse - the result is to make difficult and often dull reading of what are actually interesting topics.
Read
September 12, 2024kindle
October 22, 2016
I really liked this book. I would not have given it four stars if I didn't. Stephen J. Gould was a great promoter and contributor to the science of evolutionary biology. As a writer of popular science he was also a great promoter of philosophical materialism. For all that I congratulate him, admire him and respect him.
However, there is something about him that exasperates me and a lot of room in this book was turned over to that. He bends over backwards to make excuses for religion. He claims that religion and science inhabit nonoverlapping majesteria and deal with entirely different matters and that there is no contradiction between them. That denies the historical record. It ignores the incompatible philosophical basis for both religion and science. The contradictory philosophical bases are idealism and materialism. He shows no awareness of that dichotomy. He does show an awareness of the historical record of censorship of science and persecution of scientists by religious forces by actually referring to some of the most well known examples, but then he goes right ahead and keeps proclaiming his nonoverlapping majesteria position as if he had not just cited its contradiction. He declares himself to be a Jewish agnostic, but then chooses to speak on behalf of religion itself. That is exemplified in his story of a student who came to him and was upset that evolution seemed to be contradicting his religion. Gould just told him that there was no contradiction despite the fact that so many religionists proclaim the contradiction themselves.
The main basis that he uses to make this claim is the word of two popes. One declared that it was okay for Catholics to believe in evolution if it turned out to be true while obviously hoping that it was not true and the other finally said that the evidence had become too overwhelming and that it was true, but that Catholics had to still believe in superstitious concepts like the infusion of the soul into humans at some time in their evolutionary history. Okay, the popes are supposed to dictate what Catholics believe, but this ignores the fact that a lot of Catholics disagree with the pope on various issues. And even if the Catholics accept evolution it is only one religion. Gould dismisses creationists as just a small group of fundamentalists and still ignores that a lot of major religions such as the Muslims have never accepted evolution. Just because the head of one religion has been forced by the facts into accepting something that he has a distaste for does not mean that all the contradictions between religion and science have just evaporated.
Read the book. Enjoy the parts that really tell you about science. Please, though, try to be critical about the parts on religion.
However, there is something about him that exasperates me and a lot of room in this book was turned over to that. He bends over backwards to make excuses for religion. He claims that religion and science inhabit nonoverlapping majesteria and deal with entirely different matters and that there is no contradiction between them. That denies the historical record. It ignores the incompatible philosophical basis for both religion and science. The contradictory philosophical bases are idealism and materialism. He shows no awareness of that dichotomy. He does show an awareness of the historical record of censorship of science and persecution of scientists by religious forces by actually referring to some of the most well known examples, but then he goes right ahead and keeps proclaiming his nonoverlapping majesteria position as if he had not just cited its contradiction. He declares himself to be a Jewish agnostic, but then chooses to speak on behalf of religion itself. That is exemplified in his story of a student who came to him and was upset that evolution seemed to be contradicting his religion. Gould just told him that there was no contradiction despite the fact that so many religionists proclaim the contradiction themselves.
The main basis that he uses to make this claim is the word of two popes. One declared that it was okay for Catholics to believe in evolution if it turned out to be true while obviously hoping that it was not true and the other finally said that the evidence had become too overwhelming and that it was true, but that Catholics had to still believe in superstitious concepts like the infusion of the soul into humans at some time in their evolutionary history. Okay, the popes are supposed to dictate what Catholics believe, but this ignores the fact that a lot of Catholics disagree with the pope on various issues. And even if the Catholics accept evolution it is only one religion. Gould dismisses creationists as just a small group of fundamentalists and still ignores that a lot of major religions such as the Muslims have never accepted evolution. Just because the head of one religion has been forced by the facts into accepting something that he has a distaste for does not mean that all the contradictions between religion and science have just evaporated.
Read the book. Enjoy the parts that really tell you about science. Please, though, try to be critical about the parts on religion.
September 4, 2016
Gould was a celebrated evolutionary biologist and paleontologist who the U.S. Congress in 2000 declared a living legend. He only lived a couple more years, having lived with mesothelioma since 1982. I'm very interested in what he was so passionate about, but this is the first time i read him and the tome was all my public library offered. It gave me lots of his 300 essays from his twenty books, including one that won a National Book Award, and some book excerpts.
Gould described himself an agnostic who deeply respects religion and understands that science and religion do not overlap, but can be separate ways of understanding the world. He's certainly knowledgeable about evolution and paleontology, teaching me a few good things that'll stick with me, but the last section about religion impresses me as both respectful and skeptical.
I'm not a baseball fan, but he definitely is and uses baseball metaphors in his essays. I did skip around this 635-page book and skim some too.
You'll enjoy reading a lot of the book that pays homage to a great scientist and writer. I didn't usually feel he was too intellectual to understand, either. He's a Charles Darwin fan and yet he could criticize the founder of evolution in a way that made sense and was engaging. It's not that he found Darwin wrong, but that he didn't go far enough because of the limits set by his Victorian society and research.
I don't know why he didn't call himself an atheist since he doesn't even believe there's a soul, but I think his great optimism not only kept him living with cancer so long, but made him want to reach out to religious people with compassion. interesting guy!
Gould described himself an agnostic who deeply respects religion and understands that science and religion do not overlap, but can be separate ways of understanding the world. He's certainly knowledgeable about evolution and paleontology, teaching me a few good things that'll stick with me, but the last section about religion impresses me as both respectful and skeptical.
I'm not a baseball fan, but he definitely is and uses baseball metaphors in his essays. I did skip around this 635-page book and skim some too.
You'll enjoy reading a lot of the book that pays homage to a great scientist and writer. I didn't usually feel he was too intellectual to understand, either. He's a Charles Darwin fan and yet he could criticize the founder of evolution in a way that made sense and was engaging. It's not that he found Darwin wrong, but that he didn't go far enough because of the limits set by his Victorian society and research.
I don't know why he didn't call himself an atheist since he doesn't even believe there's a soul, but I think his great optimism not only kept him living with cancer so long, but made him want to reach out to religious people with compassion. interesting guy!
June 25, 2016
I have taken a long time to read this very good compilation of what the authors considered to be the most representative work of the famous prolific science-writer (and brilliant evolutionary biologist) Stephen Jay Gould. I have to admit that as far as science-writing goes i still think no-one beats Carl Sagan..However I did learn much about geology, paleontology and especially evolutionary biology from reading this thick (and at times difficult to follow due to my ignorance) book. Can't help thinking that if books that attempt to describe real science from following universal scientific reasoning methodology such as this (and any of Sagan's) were made mandatory reading for (at least) science undergraduates perhaps the we would be educating better scientists and humans in general...
Given the shockingly sad result of the very recent referendum that took place in the UK I think I should end this short review by citing a few lines of what is perhaps one of the most insightful chapters of this book (Just in the middle; pg 569). We have indeed a "...vulgar (human) tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of the continuum of possibilities and break them into dichotomies assigning one group to one pole and the other to the opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties of intermediate positions(...)". We are a flawed species with potential to do good and evil and only education can reduce the probability
of making perhaps irreversible mistakes.
Given the shockingly sad result of the very recent referendum that took place in the UK I think I should end this short review by citing a few lines of what is perhaps one of the most insightful chapters of this book (Just in the middle; pg 569). We have indeed a "...vulgar (human) tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of the continuum of possibilities and break them into dichotomies assigning one group to one pole and the other to the opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties of intermediate positions(...)". We are a flawed species with potential to do good and evil and only education can reduce the probability
of making perhaps irreversible mistakes.
March 26, 2008
This is a great book to skim for some of Gould's best and most interesting writing. And it's certainly good to have a one-volume selection that represents the sprawling yard sale that was Gould's career. I say 'skim' the book because so much of what he wrote was tied more to his own obsessions and idiosyncracies than to anything the vast majority of people would consider interesting. Sometimes forgotten 19th century contemporaries of Darwin are forgotten for a reason, a fact that seems to have been lost on Gould. Also, his writings on baseball are pretty mediocre. That said, his refutations of strict adaptationism are fascinating and the sections in here about punctuated equilibrium are a great introduction to the theory.
May 5, 2009
A fantastic "greatest hits" from the brilliant evolutionary biologist. This great compilation visits many of SJG's most enduring themes: the beauty of natural selection, the structure of evolutionary theory, the failings of evolutionary psychology and the wrong-headed approach of the justification of social Darwinism. Finally, in a way that benefits immensely from SJG's eloquence, his thoughts on religion and science: from the beauty and practicality of Non-Overlapping Magisteria to the dangers and failures of creationism. Now that he is no longer around to write, it is always worth revisiting the treasures he left behind...
April 18, 2015
I found Stephen Jay Gould's essays to be hit or miss - some quite poignant, others far too long and rambling and a bit outdated. Gould is most certainly a prolific writer and renowned scientist, so I felt obligated to read his work at some point in career (since his evolutionary theories relate directly to my own research). This edited anthology was put together well, and I thought represented a good overview of his varied writings (from essay on personal to political topics). I'm glad I read this book, and I did learn some things about the history of science, but I wouldn't raise it above the level of 3 stars. Mostly, I just didn't feel like I could connect with the majority of his essays.
February 9, 2013
Stephen Jay Gould is a little hit-and-miss. Some of his essays are quite singular, but others are rather boring historical pieces. I respect him for his willingness to contradict the neo-Darwinian synthesis orthodoxy, and, while recognizing the validity of adaptive design, (rightfully, I think), challenging the black box of ascribing an adaptive purpose to virtually every characteristic living organisms have. It's also fun to read somebody so well read in so many different areas. A true renaissance man like him comes by very rarely.
February 27, 2009
I wouldn't say I read this book so much as I plodded through it. The writing style and subject matter are both dense throughout, and especially tough for someone without much of a life sciences background. Not a book to take to the beach, but certainly educational if you're curious about the topic.
October 24, 2007
looks really good.
got this book from the library, held on to it for a long while whithout reading to much of it (i always have too many other books waiting to be read!) then returned it. need to pick up my own copy sometime so i can read it on my own time.
got this book from the library, held on to it for a long while whithout reading to much of it (i always have too many other books waiting to be read!) then returned it. need to pick up my own copy sometime so i can read it on my own time.
January 21, 2008
An excellent collection of Steven Jay Gould's writings. His brilliance and clarity of voice and language is practically unheard of these days. This book left me excited about reading other texts and articles that Gould has written and left me thinking differently about the world.
November 28, 2013
Must read. A brilliant collection of essays mostly for the layman. Beautiful profound insights into the nature of evolution, current academic discussions on the matter and the implications of different theories in our worldview.
October 25, 2014
This is basically the book version of Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich's Radiolab, with plenty of baseball statistics thrown in. I'll definitely be returning to this someday, I'm just not up to anything this science-y right now.
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