The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould (Norton, 1980)
Subtitle: More Reflections in Natural History

Here's a bedside book that will repay you with intelligent and, above all, hopeful dreams, for I've failed to mention that Gould is an exemplary intellectual. He is generous even to those he most vehemently opposes for racism, sexism, class bias or other charlatanry. He assures us that "survival of the fittest" does not mean a declaration of Hobbes' "War of all against all," and reminds us that "fitness" is measured by being appropriate for an environment, and is not a degree on a mythical chain of being from lowest to highest and always in contest. Evolution, he argues, is not directional: bacteria and one-celled organisms may have been "first," but that doesn't mean we are the "last" and therefore the goal to which evolution has worked. Bacteria are still here, and still dominate the world in terms of numbers and types and mass, and even the beetles are doing better to "fit" than the House of Mammal. Gould's writing is combative and respectful, humanly hopeful, humorous and, above all, articulately knowledgeable. A boon companion if there ever was one.

Bertolt Brecht claimed that, contrary to dreary bourgeois ideology, entertainment and learning are not mutually exclusive, and the essays of paleologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould epitomize how happily delight and discovery can cohabitate. From about 1970-2000, the Harvard prof wrote a monthly column for Natural History Magazine where he perfected the art of the essay form, traversing the range of human interests, art, geology, music, architecture, physics, taxonomy, politics, history, philosophy and sport. Gould's trademark humor and whimsy grace an essentially serious mission: to rescue the public from misunderstandings and distortions of science through mismanaged "popularizing" versions and skewed campaigns by pseudoscientific crusaders, detractors and proponents. His thesis is simple, and it should appear self-evident upon adequate reflection. It is that science is both more and less than an objective version of the final answers. It is more than this or that answer in being a methodology that refers only to questions that can have verifiable answers. It is less than objective in that it is always inflected if not infected by contemporary social perspectives that frame what is possible to believe within the blinders of the ideologies which we always inhabit. If these claims seem questionable to you, I can only suggest you follow Gould's historical, logical and evidential tracings of, always, primary sources. He speaks with authority of the science and the history, and is meticulous in explanation of his documentation. He does all this without dumbing down the science or the history, or talking down to the reader.

The Panda's Thumb, one of many Gould essay collections, was published in 1980 allows the reader to test one of Gould's themes at the source; i.e., that science changes, that it is replete with claims later rejected, and that scientific theories are somewhat subjective always. To read it now is to contemplate recent history and science. (And, sadly, in the interim the common perception of science has become more and more skewed, not less, by the social ideologues of Creationism.)

These essays come from the first decade of Gould's columns but are already a characteristic mix of the specific and the general. "Bathybius and Eozoon" recounts a fascinating and instructive story of "brilliant errors" and shows the vacillations of scientific claims. Gould also laments that big discoveries are often heralded by the public media at the onset but the media fails to take notice of later disproofs. Another essay, "Piltdown Revisited," examines in detail the long-accepted "Piltdown Man," English Hominid fossils uncovered during the early 20th century (1909-1916), which were revealed to have been a fraud only at mid-century, after more than 30 years.

There are 31 essays here, averaging about nine pages long; each seizes upon an issue of science anchored and exemplified in some particular and usually curious feature--of zoology, anatomy, the history of ideas, for instance. One of the sections examines spurious claims about evidence for relative inferiority and superiority of human races, genders, and classes, hierarchies once proven by anatomical claims, like, for instance, women's smaller skulls, lower classes' supposed pronounced jaws, ratios of the ulnar bones compared to those of Chimpanzees. The sad truth is that some such claims, as, for instance, supposed correlations of gender or race with Intelligence Quotients, as some "thing" found in "nature," rest on not only dubious, but sometimes falsified data.

There are two sources for this falsification. First are the either malicious or perhaps delusional claims about fictive examinations never conducted; I am thinking here of
the scandal of Sir Cyril Burt in the 20th century. Second are those examinations which yield to the beliefs of the scientist probably unconsciously, like a Ouija board game, where no one may be aware of consciously prodding the gamepiece to move but it does.

Another analogy would be measurements a costumer receives from a actor: "Oh, yes, I checked and my waist is about 24 inches." The wise costumer never quibbles, but tactfully urges an independent check by saying something like, "Yes, but I have my own method." Here one may give the example of Paul Broca, distinguished French scientist of the 1900s, who measured the relative capacity of human skulls from different races, choosing, probably unwittingly, the largest Caucasian (European) skulls, the skulls of Bushmen or what was once called the "Pygmy" peoples to represent African, etc. The supposed capacity was arrived at by weighing how many grams of metal pellets the skull could hold. When such experiments were later repeated, the truth emerged that skulls are like bags of fruit: the fruit a seller can put in a bag is always less than the fruit that the bag can be made to hold by the buyer. (For details about this, see Gould's book, "The Mismeasure of Man," a definitive rebuttal for such pseudo-science and for Intelligence Test claims and classifications of idiots, morons, and various such pseudoscientific classes of inferiors and deficients.)

Not all the sections are so depressing. One set of essays examines the mechanics of evolutionary change: just how does it take place? Among the ideas advanced are that of the "Hopeful Monster," suddenly born as a result of a random mutation and just in the nick of time to save its species from extinction. One can easily think of objections, but let a scientist talk about it. What about "Lamarckism"? In Evolution Basin in the high Sierra Nevadas there is a pass called "Lamarck Col." Who was Lamarck and what was, or is, his theory? Gould will tell you about the theory that organisms respond to a perceived need during their lifetime, such as a giraffe stretching its neck further and further to reach receding tree leaves, and then bequeathing the "acquired characteristic" of a longer neck to its progeny. Are there sudden leaps in evolution, or slow changes? Did Darwin champion Social Darwinism? Was he even a "Darwinist"? Gould cites Marx's comment that he was not a Marxist, and we know how Tolstoy protested "Tolstoyism."
How did our brains evolve? How did we ever get up on our hind legs? And when? And why? Why do we live longer than other animals our size?

From Mickey Mouse to anglerfish, from dinosaurs to birds, South American marsupials to plate tectonics and turtle migration. How old is life on earth? How do we know the earth is slowing its rotations? Are we losing the moon? With nods to Bach, Teilhard du Chardin, Maria Montessori, the windows of Chartes Cathedral and bacteria who build anatomical magnets to know which end's up.