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(0)Stephen Jay Gould
2) The hedgehog, the fox, and the magister's pox: mending the gap between science and the humanities
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Stephen Jay Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long. To establish his two protagonists, Gould draws from a seventh century b.c. proverb attributed to the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus that said roughly, "The fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows one great and...
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A final collection of essays from "Natural History" magazine includes writings on such subjects as Charles Darwin, the methods of science versus those of the humanistic disciplines, Nabokov's butterfly research, and the author's grandfather's arrival in America one hundred years ago.
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Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of choosing between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean (which he calls NOMA, for non-overlapping magisteria) that accords dignity and distinction to each realm?
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"With attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes the content and discusses the history and origins of the three core commitments of classical Darwinism: that natural selection works on organisms, not genes or species; that it is almost exclusively the mechanism of adaptive evolutionary change; and that these changes are incremental, not drastic. Next, he examines the three critiques that currently challenge this classic Darwinian edifice:...
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Evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has perfected the art of the essay in this brilliant new collection. These thirty-four essays, most originally published in Natural History magazine, exemplify the keen insight with which Dr. Gould observes the natural world and convey the infectious enthusiasm for fossils and evolutionary theory that has made his books award-winning, national best-sellers. In his latest musings on evolution...
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Few would question the truism that humankind is the crowning achievement of evolution; that the defining thrust of life's history yields progress over time from the primitive and simple to the more advanced and complex; that the disappearance of .400 hitting in baseball is a fact to be bemoaned; or that identifying an existing trend can be helpful in making important life decisions. Few, that is, except Stephen Jay Gould who, in his new book Full...
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"If Stephen Jay Gould did not exist it would hardly be possible to invent him. Who else among scientists who write reaches so far or grasps so surely the "pretty pebbles" that together make up the amplitude of life?"--BOOK JACKET. "Eight Little Piggies is the sixth volume in a series of essays, begun in 1974 in the pages of Natural History under the rubric "This View of Life." Now numbering more than 200 in an unbroken string, they comprise a unique...
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A look at how and why some species die out, with an emphasis on the extinction resistance of others. Though the Alvarez theory, that the demise of the dinosaurs may have been affected by a fall of meteors, is still scientifically suspect, Raup (statistical paleontology, U. of Chicago) figures he may as well be hung for a cow as for a calf, and argues that all extinction of species are at least partly caused by meteors. The thought that even the fittest...
19) The book of life
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This book uses art and science to tell the story of life on earth. The text provides thorough understanding of the latest research and is accompanied by paintings prepared especially for this book. Never before has our planet's evolution been so clearly explained. History is marked by disaster. The book of life explains how mammals, having survived at least one of these disasters -- the impact of a massive comet -- luckily inherited the earth. Next...