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Reflections in Natural History #8
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms is the newest collection of best-selling scientist Stephen Jay Gould's popular essays from Natural History magazine (the longest-running series of scientific essays in history). It is also the first of the final three such collections, since Dr. Gould has announced that the series will end with the turn of the millennium.
In this collection, Gould consciously and unconventionally formulates a humanistic natural history, a consideration of how humans have learned to study and understand nature, rather than a history of nature itself. With his customary brilliance, Gould examines the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that build nature's and humanity's diversity and order. In affecting short biographies, he depicts how scholars grapple with problems of science and philosophy as he illuminates the interaction of the outer world with the unique human ability to struggle to understand the whys and wherefores of existence.
From the Hardcover edition.
In this collection, Gould consciously and unconventionally formulates a humanistic natural history, a consideration of how humans have learned to study and understand nature, rather than a history of nature itself. With his customary brilliance, Gould examines the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that build nature's and humanity's diversity and order. In affecting short biographies, he depicts how scholars grapple with problems of science and philosophy as he illuminates the interaction of the outer world with the unique human ability to struggle to understand the whys and wherefores of existence.
From the Hardcover edition.
422 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
24 people are currently reading
813 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 57 reviews
November 19, 2016
I enjoy these collections of Natural Science magazine essays by Stephen Jay Gould, but this is not his best one. Of the five I've read so far -- there are 10 altogether -- this is my least favorite. At his best SJG's essays play off a number of seemingly unrelated topics and then slowly, often dazzlingly, he weaves the disparate threads together. He still does that here. And the best essays, "The Diet of Worms and the Defenestration of Prague" and "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" are right up there with his very best. But too often the essays are flat and lacking in the discursive fun that is his hallmark. I intend to read the other five books. But if you're going to read only one let me recommend either Dinosaur in a Haystack or Bully for Brontosaurus. Gould's Wonderful Life, about the Burgess Shale, is brilliant, too, but it's a stand-alone title and not part of the essay series. See my review for each of these.
December 13, 2012
I read this book before I did reviews. But I’ve been working on my PhD and part of that is thinking about how the images we are presented with of the world shape the way we see that world. And the best example I can think of about that is the third essay in this collection, Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly . You see, there was a fad in the 1850s in England to have an aquarium in your house. A whole series of technologies had come together at the same time – we learnt about the importance of oxygen to going on living, glass making became industrialised and produced glass of consistent strength and clarity, we were able to transport sea water about the place – and all of this stuff was necessary before aquariums could possibly exist.
But what no one imagined before we started having aquariums was the change this might make to how we see the world. Prior to having aquariums – where one looks directly at fish in an eye to eye view – fish and sea life was always either shown after it had been dragged up onto the shore or as if looking down on it from above in a pool. It was only with aquariums that our view of the ‘natural’ way to see fish and sea life changed. Now, isn’t that interesting? The perspective we now believe as being completely obvious and completely natural only came into existence relatively recently and was anything but natural or obvious prior to that.
The other lovely idea in this is that the top of Mount Everest is sandstone – that is, the top of our tallest mountain was once at the bottom of the ocean. If that doesn’t do strange things to your mind, you really aren’t trying.
But what no one imagined before we started having aquariums was the change this might make to how we see the world. Prior to having aquariums – where one looks directly at fish in an eye to eye view – fish and sea life was always either shown after it had been dragged up onto the shore or as if looking down on it from above in a pool. It was only with aquariums that our view of the ‘natural’ way to see fish and sea life changed. Now, isn’t that interesting? The perspective we now believe as being completely obvious and completely natural only came into existence relatively recently and was anything but natural or obvious prior to that.
The other lovely idea in this is that the top of Mount Everest is sandstone – that is, the top of our tallest mountain was once at the bottom of the ocean. If that doesn’t do strange things to your mind, you really aren’t trying.
September 7, 2024
The full title of this book is Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (the latter being the governing body before which Martin Luther defended his beliefs.
I believe this is the last of Gould's collected essays in my possession, having gradually read and passed them on in the interests of slimming down my collection of paper books. Thankfully, it's better than most of the recent ones and only tails off at the end so there are some interesting articles. They cover the author's usual concerns of evolution, human tendency to view our species as an inevitable pinnacle of development instead of a lucky contingency, and the history of scientific investigation with stumbling blocks but surprising correct deductions even if for the wrong reasons.
Essays cover such diverse topics as cave paintings, which the author points out are not "primitive" as well as throwing light on the extinct giant deer (known erroneously as the Irish elk), Leonard da Vinci's grounding in the context of his own time despite his genius (and not the all-knowing "spaceman" parachuted in from the Twentieth Century as in a lot of portrayals), and Turner and the truth about the Fighting Temeraire. The fate of the Dodo, Martin Luther's anti semitism (though not his misogyny), Christopher Columbus' key role in the exploitation of the indigenous population of South America and its offshore islands, including the transportation and genocide of the original friendly inhabitants of the Bahamas, and the Victorian craze for aquariums with the resulting change in the portrayal of underwater life are included in the many other topics. So a good end to my marathon read of his books and only held back from a full rating by some of the more obtuse entries later in the book. 4 stars therefore.
I believe this is the last of Gould's collected essays in my possession, having gradually read and passed them on in the interests of slimming down my collection of paper books. Thankfully, it's better than most of the recent ones and only tails off at the end so there are some interesting articles. They cover the author's usual concerns of evolution, human tendency to view our species as an inevitable pinnacle of development instead of a lucky contingency, and the history of scientific investigation with stumbling blocks but surprising correct deductions even if for the wrong reasons.
Essays cover such diverse topics as cave paintings, which the author points out are not "primitive" as well as throwing light on the extinct giant deer (known erroneously as the Irish elk), Leonard da Vinci's grounding in the context of his own time despite his genius (and not the all-knowing "spaceman" parachuted in from the Twentieth Century as in a lot of portrayals), and Turner and the truth about the Fighting Temeraire. The fate of the Dodo, Martin Luther's anti semitism (though not his misogyny), Christopher Columbus' key role in the exploitation of the indigenous population of South America and its offshore islands, including the transportation and genocide of the original friendly inhabitants of the Bahamas, and the Victorian craze for aquariums with the resulting change in the portrayal of underwater life are included in the many other topics. So a good end to my marathon read of his books and only held back from a full rating by some of the more obtuse entries later in the book. 4 stars therefore.
July 5, 2018
Start by listing Gould's virtues: passionate about paleontology and paleontologists, contagiously curious about nature and obscure history, scrupulously fair to the religious and the pre-modern, animated by justice. For an academic, his prose is highly flavoursome and fun. He has a considered opinion about Darwin's handwriting and the meaning of baseball. One of his essay collections was very important to me as a teen, showing me that I could unify truth-seeking and justice-seeking, and with style.
But this is all countermanded, because he is just not trustworthy on human topics, and neither on core evolutionary theory, I'm told. From his enormously influential, fallacious dismissal of intelligence research in general and Morton in particular, to his dishonest coup of public discourse over punctuated equilibrium (pushing the flashy and revolutionary version in literary magazines, retreating to minimal and uncontentious forms in the science journals who could actually evaluate it), he muddied the waters even as he brandished real literary talent and noble political intentions. This is unforgiveable: empirical clarity is too rare and precious to sacrifice so.
Maynard Smith:
Krugman:
Tooby and Cosmides:
Here is a fictional leaf from Gould's ad hominem book, to give you a sense of what he does, at his worst:
(For full effect I should now chide him for his genic panadaptationism.)
Along with Lewontin and Rose, Gould mediated a huge contradiction in our culture: they allowed the C20th left to feel we were scientific, in our comfortable blank-slatism. That we had already incorporated the deep challenge of evolutionary biology - since these eminent men told us it had no human implications.
Read Gould for fun and uplift, but take great care, for he cares about other things more than truth. (Read Midgley and Singer first if the politics scare you; they might stop you fleeing into Gould's dodgy arms.)
From James. The Leonardo and Columbus esays are 4/5.
But this is all countermanded, because he is just not trustworthy on human topics, and neither on core evolutionary theory, I'm told. From his enormously influential, fallacious dismissal of intelligence research in general and Morton in particular, to his dishonest coup of public discourse over punctuated equilibrium (pushing the flashy and revolutionary version in literary magazines, retreating to minimal and uncontentious forms in the science journals who could actually evaluate it), he muddied the waters even as he brandished real literary talent and noble political intentions. This is unforgiveable: empirical clarity is too rare and precious to sacrifice so.
Maynard Smith:
Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory.
Krugman:
Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is beloved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading. His impressive literary and historical erudition makes his work seem profound to most readers, but informed readers eventually conclude that there's no there there.
Tooby and Cosmides:
We suggest that the best way to grasp the nature of Gould's writings is to recognize them as one of the most formidable bodies of fiction to be produced in recent American letters. Gould brilliantly works a number of literary devices to construct a fictional "Gould" as the protagonist of his essays and to construct a world of "evolutionary biology" every bit as imaginary and plausible as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Most of the elements of Gould's writing make no sense if they are interpreted as an honest attempt to communicate about science (e.g., why would he characterize so many researchers as saying the opposite of what they actually do) but come sharply into focus when understood as necessary components of a world constructed for the fictional "Gould" to have heroic fantasy adventures in...
"Gould" the protagonist is a much loved character who reveals himself to be learned, subtle, open-minded, tolerant, funny, gracious to his opponents, a tireless adversary of cultural prejudice, able to swim upstream against popular opinion with unflinching moral courage, able to pierce the surface appearances that capture others, and indeed to be not only the most brilliant innovator in biology since Darwin, but more importantly to be the voice of humane reason against the forces of ignorance, passion, incuriousity, and injustice. The author Gould, not least because he labors to beguile his audience into confusing his fictional targets with actual people and fields, is sadly none of these things.
Yet in the final analysis, there are genuine grounds for hope in the immense and enduring popularity of Gould. Gould is popular, we think, because readers see in "Gould" the embodiment of humane reason, the best aspirations of the scientific impulse. It is this "Gould" that we will continue to honor, and, who, indeed, would fight to bring the illumination that modern evolutionary science can offer into wider use.
Here is a fictional leaf from Gould's ad hominem book, to give you a sense of what he does, at his worst:
Gould is famed for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which holds that adaption and speciation is not generally a slow, gradual process measurable in tens of thousands of year periods, but instead a rapid response to environmental shocks, measurable in hundred-year periods. The political bias of this theory is too blatant to ignore: as a Marxist, Gould requires that sustainable change be possible by revolution rather than by long accumulation (...)
(For full effect I should now chide him for his genic panadaptationism.)
Along with Lewontin and Rose, Gould mediated a huge contradiction in our culture: they allowed the C20th left to feel we were scientific, in our comfortable blank-slatism. That we had already incorporated the deep challenge of evolutionary biology - since these eminent men told us it had no human implications.
Read Gould for fun and uplift, but take great care, for he cares about other things more than truth. (Read Midgley and Singer first if the politics scare you; they might stop you fleeing into Gould's dodgy arms.)
From James. The Leonardo and Columbus esays are 4/5.
January 25, 2014
Tengo años que leo los libros de ensayos de Gould y debo decir que este hombre siempre me sorprende y enamora más con cada libro.
De los libros de él que he leído en los últimos años creo que es el que más me ha gustado como un todo ya que no contiene casi ningún ensayo que sea muy técnico o que se haga lento y por el contrario, la mayoría de los ensayos son sobre temáticas muy atractivas o cuando son un poco más densos (los más técnicos o con más referencias obscuras) están escritos de tal manera que no se vuelven tan pesados.
Aunque hace muchas referencias a sus ensayos anteriores, explica muchos temas de manera técnica y están presentes sus características referencias cultas (a obras de arte, ópera y literatura clásica, principalmente), en esta colección lo noto mucho más fresco y accesible que en sus otros libros y mantiene dichos aspectos bastante más contenidos que, por ejemplo en "Dientes de gallina y dedos de caballo" (lleno de ensayos técnicos) o en "Acabo de llegar" (lleno de ensayos con referencias culturales difíciles de seguir si no se conoce las obras o algo rebuscadas) así que considero que es un excelente libro para quien busque una introducción a la obra de Gould.
De los libros de él que he leído en los últimos años creo que es el que más me ha gustado como un todo ya que no contiene casi ningún ensayo que sea muy técnico o que se haga lento y por el contrario, la mayoría de los ensayos son sobre temáticas muy atractivas o cuando son un poco más densos (los más técnicos o con más referencias obscuras) están escritos de tal manera que no se vuelven tan pesados.
Aunque hace muchas referencias a sus ensayos anteriores, explica muchos temas de manera técnica y están presentes sus características referencias cultas (a obras de arte, ópera y literatura clásica, principalmente), en esta colección lo noto mucho más fresco y accesible que en sus otros libros y mantiene dichos aspectos bastante más contenidos que, por ejemplo en "Dientes de gallina y dedos de caballo" (lleno de ensayos técnicos) o en "Acabo de llegar" (lleno de ensayos con referencias culturales difíciles de seguir si no se conoce las obras o algo rebuscadas) así que considero que es un excelente libro para quien busque una introducción a la obra de Gould.
September 17, 2018
Hallelujah I'm finished. That was painful. Best essays: The Great Western and the Fighting Temeraire, and The Diet of Worms and Defenestration of Prague.
March 16, 2018
Otra interesantísima tanda de ensayos de historia natural. Me han gustado casi todos pero hay uno en el que siendo Gould agnóstico defiende la religión pues como que no.
June 5, 2016
I have Zizek to thank for introducing me to Stephen Jay Gould, who I first started reading ~2 years ago, I think. I sometimes wish I had discovered Stephen Jay Gould earlier. Coming to terms with Darwin’s work was a slow and somewhat tortuous one, beginning at the end of high school, extending all the way until second-year college. My first proddings came from close friends (to this day) who were observants of the Islamic faith. I am endlessly in debt to them, because they were the ones who opened me up to life’s large philosophical questions, to issues of social justice, history, and so forth. They challenged me to more carefully rethink my orientation to evolutionary science, and cited very good academic resources for me to consider, which I of course never took up at the time — preferring to keep to my own evangelical Christian apologetics websites and similar types of sources trusted within my family’s faith community. The pastor of my church used to mock the notion of evolution, citing reputable evidence in the form of handy slogans like “from goo to you”, to prove how ridiculous such an unfounded “theory” truly was. I even chose creationism as my topic in Grade 9 or 10 for a 3 minute speech we had to write and recite from memory to an audience of parents — that is how committed I was to this cause.
I think the first time I had seriously questioned my historical understanding of the earth was after watching Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” which I had borrowed from the library. It featured the Chauvet Cave in France (mentioned in this book by Gould, in a very interesting essay about unknown (unfossilized) humps on the backs of now extinct giant deer — or Irish Elk as their commonly mis-referred to as — that are now known about only through cave paintings). I think what struck me was that Herzog, didn’t seem to have an axe to grind, he just referenced the “32,000 year old” time frame very nonchalantly, with great mystery and wonder and excitement, but not didactically.
When I reached college I encountered the notion there existed Christians who identified as Old Earth Creationists — an idea that I think I was rather dismissive of, but it lodged itself in the back of my mind as a possibility. At this point, I was of the opinion that I wasn’t really sure what I thought, and that evolution was possible, but I was highly skeptical of it and never took what even professors said at face-value, though it was not like I was fact checking them or anything because I did not understand how academic literature and peer-reviewing worked at the time nor the empirical nature of science. I thought validity rested mostly on sound rhetorical reasoning.
In a first year geology course, I found myself thinking throughout the semester, “these chronological numbers are just speculations, theories that are impossible to prove.” By the end of the semester though, I found the old earth narrative very compelling. So many separate fields of science seemed to be unintentionally corroborating each other, and I think that was the point at which I became completely open to the possibility of an earth beyond 10,000 years in age (lol), and I think a young and old earth were equally possible to me at that point. This sounds so ridiculous as I recount it now, but I also try not to kick myself over it in embarrassment because I’m trying to embrace my past also, and understand my personhood as a process in time that is beautiful in some way or something like that, haha.
But it would take a persons of faith to convince me fully. The following summer, I read C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”, a book recommended to my congregation by the very same pastor who looked disdainfully on evolution. I think one of the things I found most surprising was how flippantly C.S. Lewis spoke of evolution, as if it wasn’t a big deal at all. He made space for people who didn’t believe in it and people who did, in his umbrella of “mere Christianity”, though it was pretty evident that he was convinced of the science. I was puzzled but also a little amused how so many evangelicals could love C.S. Lewis and continually recommend his books, but feel so much animosity towards the theory of evolution and not feel like his books threatened their religious doctrines of creationism. But I felt myself more and more sliding into acceptance of an earth that did not match a literal interpretation of Genesis, and aware of the many scientific fields, which seemed to have all separately arrived at the same conclusion regarding the age of the earth and the human species and so on.
It was a relatively minor Brian McLaren book called “Finding Our Way Again: The Return of Ancient Practices,” that I think convinced me more conclusively. It was likely because I thought McLaren to be an earnest person of faith, so committed to Christ, yet very insistent that evolution and an old earth were not really up for debate by Christian creationists, because the debate was a scientific one, and the appropriate scientists had for quite a while already arrived at a consensus. I think what helped me the most was his example of Galileo and how the Church had already been wrong about science before — many times — but in each error’s wake they adjusted their theology and it didn’t necessarily make their faith any less meaningful, nor was it necessarily the ruin of their religion (though that may be debatable).
This was also around the time I was into Brett McCracken’s blog “Still Searching” (I now strongly disagree with his conservative social interpretations of Christianity) and he had posted a video of N.T. Wright promoting the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific natural history, and emphasizing not only that you could believe in evolution and still be a Christian, but we had a responsibility to take science seriously as a way of taking God’s creation seriously.
Years later, having traversed the theological spectrum, here I am, reading Stephen Jay Gould, thinking maybe he could have saved me all this trouble, but also skeptical it could have ever worked out that way. But for any Christian who grew up in a fundamentalist faith community, but no longer wants to leave their intellect at the door when professing their faith, I think Gould’s essay, “Non-overlapping Magisteria”, is a must-read in this book (and it’s freely available to read on the internet here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/librar... )
A useful excerpt from the essay:
“I am often asked whether I ever encounter creationism as a live issue among my Harvard undergraduate students. I reply that only once, in nearly thirty years of teaching, did I experience such an incident. A very sincere and serious freshman student came to my office hours with the following question that had clearly been troubling him deeply: "I am a devout Christian and have never had any reason to doubt evolution, an idea that seems both exciting and particularly well documented. But my roommate, a proselytizing Evangelical, has been insisting with enormous vigor that I cannot be both a real Christian and an evolutionist. So tell me, can a person believe both in God and evolution?" Again, I gulped hard, did my intellectual duty, and reassured him that evolution was both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief—a position I hold sincerely, but still an odd situation for a Jewish agnostic.”
Gould takes religion and theology very seriously. I have never encountered a scientist who could so poetically weave so many bible verses throughout his scientific contemplations. It is incredibly beautiful. How else could I have ever learned that Robert Boyle wrote so much theology:
“Of all the scientists in Newton’s orbit, Boyle was the most conventionally and sincerely devout. Moreover, Boyle did not consider religion as a merely private matter. He wrote as much about theology as about science, and he composed several treatises on the potentially harmonious relationship between these two disciplines, including the work analyzed in this essay.”
What Gould’s essay “Non-overlapping Magisteria” emphasizes is a jurisdictional boundary between scientific and religious epistemologies:
“...magister means “teacher” in Latin. We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed “conflict” or “warfare” between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority—and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or “non-overlapping magisteria”). The net of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry,”
Kierkegaard emphasized a similar distinction between reason and faith. He emphasized that despite all the accumulated knowledge of humanity (i.e. science), one could not read from this body of knowledge how to live out and experience certain aspects of one life. Kierkegaard’s existentialism emphasized how the domain of experience, passions, spirituality, and so forth lay outside the domain of this accumulated knowledge.
One of my favourite novelists who frequently worked with Kierkegaardian themes was Walker Percy, who used notions of horizontality and verticality to articulate a similar orientation to his life “searching” (in his novel, “The Moviegoer”):
“If you walk in the front door of the laboratory, you undertake the vertical search. You have a specimen, a cubic centimeter of water or a frog or a pinch of salt or a star.”
“One learns general things?”
“And there is excitement to the search.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because as you get deeper into the search, you unify. You understand more and more specimens by fewer and fewer formulae. There is the excitement. Of course you are always after the big one, the new key, the secret leverage point, and that is the best of it.”
“And it doesn’t matter where you are or who you are.”
“No.”
“And the danger is of becoming no one nowhere.”
“But now I have undertaken a different kind of search, a horizontal search. As a consequence, what takes place in my room is less important. What is important is what I shall find when I leave my room and wander in the neighborhood. Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.”
Science can tell us the earth is ~4.5 billion years old. But science cannot describe the way many communities of people — living in various parts of the world, embedded in oral traditions and narratives, and continuing particular webs of interlocution — FEEL how old the earth is as, together, they move upon its mountains, trace lines along its shores, traverse its open plains, stare up at its forest canopies. When fundamentalist scientists rudely intrude upon the lifeworld of quiet rural towns throughout the Americas, or poor villages of post-colonial Africa, insisting that their creationist views are backwards, regressive, and these people must be converted to the zeniths of Enlightenment Rationalism, are we not returning to the domain of colonialism itself? Is it the task of these scientists to evangelize the masses regarding the age of the earth, or are there not more important things to educate people on? Or for that matter, more important things we have to learn from them? I heard a very wise confession from a Jewish rabbi at my school, who was also a retired professor of science and philosophy. He said, of course he believes the earth is ~4.5 billion years old, but that 6000 year timeline within the biblical narrative is important to him as well. The belief that the earth is 6000 years old still means something to him — possibly a window into more ancient iterations of his community, past (and even present for some people) ways of seeing the wonderful world around them, of imagining their past and fostering the narrative currents, which brought them to where they were, and would carry their descendants along temporal paths to where we are today.
I think the first time I had seriously questioned my historical understanding of the earth was after watching Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” which I had borrowed from the library. It featured the Chauvet Cave in France (mentioned in this book by Gould, in a very interesting essay about unknown (unfossilized) humps on the backs of now extinct giant deer — or Irish Elk as their commonly mis-referred to as — that are now known about only through cave paintings). I think what struck me was that Herzog, didn’t seem to have an axe to grind, he just referenced the “32,000 year old” time frame very nonchalantly, with great mystery and wonder and excitement, but not didactically.
When I reached college I encountered the notion there existed Christians who identified as Old Earth Creationists — an idea that I think I was rather dismissive of, but it lodged itself in the back of my mind as a possibility. At this point, I was of the opinion that I wasn’t really sure what I thought, and that evolution was possible, but I was highly skeptical of it and never took what even professors said at face-value, though it was not like I was fact checking them or anything because I did not understand how academic literature and peer-reviewing worked at the time nor the empirical nature of science. I thought validity rested mostly on sound rhetorical reasoning.
In a first year geology course, I found myself thinking throughout the semester, “these chronological numbers are just speculations, theories that are impossible to prove.” By the end of the semester though, I found the old earth narrative very compelling. So many separate fields of science seemed to be unintentionally corroborating each other, and I think that was the point at which I became completely open to the possibility of an earth beyond 10,000 years in age (lol), and I think a young and old earth were equally possible to me at that point. This sounds so ridiculous as I recount it now, but I also try not to kick myself over it in embarrassment because I’m trying to embrace my past also, and understand my personhood as a process in time that is beautiful in some way or something like that, haha.
But it would take a persons of faith to convince me fully. The following summer, I read C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”, a book recommended to my congregation by the very same pastor who looked disdainfully on evolution. I think one of the things I found most surprising was how flippantly C.S. Lewis spoke of evolution, as if it wasn’t a big deal at all. He made space for people who didn’t believe in it and people who did, in his umbrella of “mere Christianity”, though it was pretty evident that he was convinced of the science. I was puzzled but also a little amused how so many evangelicals could love C.S. Lewis and continually recommend his books, but feel so much animosity towards the theory of evolution and not feel like his books threatened their religious doctrines of creationism. But I felt myself more and more sliding into acceptance of an earth that did not match a literal interpretation of Genesis, and aware of the many scientific fields, which seemed to have all separately arrived at the same conclusion regarding the age of the earth and the human species and so on.
It was a relatively minor Brian McLaren book called “Finding Our Way Again: The Return of Ancient Practices,” that I think convinced me more conclusively. It was likely because I thought McLaren to be an earnest person of faith, so committed to Christ, yet very insistent that evolution and an old earth were not really up for debate by Christian creationists, because the debate was a scientific one, and the appropriate scientists had for quite a while already arrived at a consensus. I think what helped me the most was his example of Galileo and how the Church had already been wrong about science before — many times — but in each error’s wake they adjusted their theology and it didn’t necessarily make their faith any less meaningful, nor was it necessarily the ruin of their religion (though that may be debatable).
This was also around the time I was into Brett McCracken’s blog “Still Searching” (I now strongly disagree with his conservative social interpretations of Christianity) and he had posted a video of N.T. Wright promoting the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific natural history, and emphasizing not only that you could believe in evolution and still be a Christian, but we had a responsibility to take science seriously as a way of taking God’s creation seriously.
Years later, having traversed the theological spectrum, here I am, reading Stephen Jay Gould, thinking maybe he could have saved me all this trouble, but also skeptical it could have ever worked out that way. But for any Christian who grew up in a fundamentalist faith community, but no longer wants to leave their intellect at the door when professing their faith, I think Gould’s essay, “Non-overlapping Magisteria”, is a must-read in this book (and it’s freely available to read on the internet here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/librar... )
A useful excerpt from the essay:
“I am often asked whether I ever encounter creationism as a live issue among my Harvard undergraduate students. I reply that only once, in nearly thirty years of teaching, did I experience such an incident. A very sincere and serious freshman student came to my office hours with the following question that had clearly been troubling him deeply: "I am a devout Christian and have never had any reason to doubt evolution, an idea that seems both exciting and particularly well documented. But my roommate, a proselytizing Evangelical, has been insisting with enormous vigor that I cannot be both a real Christian and an evolutionist. So tell me, can a person believe both in God and evolution?" Again, I gulped hard, did my intellectual duty, and reassured him that evolution was both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief—a position I hold sincerely, but still an odd situation for a Jewish agnostic.”
Gould takes religion and theology very seriously. I have never encountered a scientist who could so poetically weave so many bible verses throughout his scientific contemplations. It is incredibly beautiful. How else could I have ever learned that Robert Boyle wrote so much theology:
“Of all the scientists in Newton’s orbit, Boyle was the most conventionally and sincerely devout. Moreover, Boyle did not consider religion as a merely private matter. He wrote as much about theology as about science, and he composed several treatises on the potentially harmonious relationship between these two disciplines, including the work analyzed in this essay.”
What Gould’s essay “Non-overlapping Magisteria” emphasizes is a jurisdictional boundary between scientific and religious epistemologies:
“...magister means “teacher” in Latin. We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed “conflict” or “warfare” between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority—and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or “non-overlapping magisteria”). The net of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry,”
Kierkegaard emphasized a similar distinction between reason and faith. He emphasized that despite all the accumulated knowledge of humanity (i.e. science), one could not read from this body of knowledge how to live out and experience certain aspects of one life. Kierkegaard’s existentialism emphasized how the domain of experience, passions, spirituality, and so forth lay outside the domain of this accumulated knowledge.
One of my favourite novelists who frequently worked with Kierkegaardian themes was Walker Percy, who used notions of horizontality and verticality to articulate a similar orientation to his life “searching” (in his novel, “The Moviegoer”):
“If you walk in the front door of the laboratory, you undertake the vertical search. You have a specimen, a cubic centimeter of water or a frog or a pinch of salt or a star.”
“One learns general things?”
“And there is excitement to the search.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because as you get deeper into the search, you unify. You understand more and more specimens by fewer and fewer formulae. There is the excitement. Of course you are always after the big one, the new key, the secret leverage point, and that is the best of it.”
“And it doesn’t matter where you are or who you are.”
“No.”
“And the danger is of becoming no one nowhere.”
“But now I have undertaken a different kind of search, a horizontal search. As a consequence, what takes place in my room is less important. What is important is what I shall find when I leave my room and wander in the neighborhood. Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.”
Science can tell us the earth is ~4.5 billion years old. But science cannot describe the way many communities of people — living in various parts of the world, embedded in oral traditions and narratives, and continuing particular webs of interlocution — FEEL how old the earth is as, together, they move upon its mountains, trace lines along its shores, traverse its open plains, stare up at its forest canopies. When fundamentalist scientists rudely intrude upon the lifeworld of quiet rural towns throughout the Americas, or poor villages of post-colonial Africa, insisting that their creationist views are backwards, regressive, and these people must be converted to the zeniths of Enlightenment Rationalism, are we not returning to the domain of colonialism itself? Is it the task of these scientists to evangelize the masses regarding the age of the earth, or are there not more important things to educate people on? Or for that matter, more important things we have to learn from them? I heard a very wise confession from a Jewish rabbi at my school, who was also a retired professor of science and philosophy. He said, of course he believes the earth is ~4.5 billion years old, but that 6000 year timeline within the biblical narrative is important to him as well. The belief that the earth is 6000 years old still means something to him — possibly a window into more ancient iterations of his community, past (and even present for some people) ways of seeing the wonderful world around them, of imagining their past and fostering the narrative currents, which brought them to where they were, and would carry their descendants along temporal paths to where we are today.
October 23, 2025
GOULD'S EIGHTH BOOK OF ESSAYS FROM "NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE," INCLUDING HIS "NOMA" PROPOSAL
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) wrote in the Introduction to this 1998 book, "I pay my homage to evolution in the preface to every volume of this series, and will now do so again. Of all general themes in science, no other could be so rich, so deep, so fascinating in extension, or so troubling (to our deepest hopes and prejudices) in implication... The wondrously peculiar human brain arose as a product of evolution, replete with odd (and often misleading) modes of reasoning originally developed for other purposes, or for no explicit purpose at all. The brain then discovers the central truth of evolution... And thus, is a kind of almost cosmically wicked recursion, evolution builds the brain, and the brain invents both the culture that must face evolution and the modes of reasoning that might elucidate the process of its own creation."
He suggests, "If we dismiss those scientists now judged wrong, only valuing them if they eventually saw the light, we will miss a grand opportunity to address one of the most elusive and portentous questions in scholarly life. What is the nature of genius; why, among brilliant people, do some make revolutions and others die in the dust of concepts whose time had begun to pass in their own day? What is the crucial difference between Darwin's transcendent greatness and [James Dwight] Dana's merely ordinary greatness?... I do not know the answer... but we can surely specify a key ingredient. Somehow, for some reason of psyche or quirk of mind, some impetus of social life or some drive of temperament, Darwin was driven to challenge, to be fearless in bringing down an intellectual universe... Dana, for other properties of the same attributes, could not, dared not, abandon the traditional hope and succor of centuries..." (Pg. 117-118)
He comments on Pope John Paul II's October 22, 1996 statement strongly supporting evolution before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: "the Catholic Church ... has long accepted both the legitimacy of evolution as a field of study and the potential harmony of evolutionary conclusions with Catholic faith... I knew that Pope Pius XII (not one of my favorite figures in twentieth-century history, to say the least) had made the primary statement in a 1950 encyclical entitled 'Humani Generis'... Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature.
"I also knew that I had no problem with this argument---for, whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject... Pope Pius XII... had properly acknowledged and respected the separate domains of science and theology. Thus, I found myself in total agreement with Humani Generis---but I had never read the document in full..." (Pg. 273)
He continues, "I quickly got the relevant writings from... the Internet... I finally understand why the recent statement seems so new, revealing, and worthy of all those headlines. And the message could not be more welcome for evolutionists, and friends of both science and religion... Humani Generis focuses on the Magisterium (or Teaching Authority) of the Church... We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed 'conflict' or 'warfare' between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority---and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or 'non-overlapping magisteria'). The net of science covers the empirical realm... The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry ... To cite the usual clichés, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of age we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven." (Pg. 273-274)
He summarizes, "Pius had grudgingly admitted evolution as a legitimate hypothesis that he regarded as only tentatively supported and potentially (as he clearly hoped) untrue. John Paul, nearly fifty years later, reaffirms the legitimacy of evolution under the NOMA principle... but then adds that additional data and theory have placed the factuality of evolution beyond reasonable doubt.... I am not, personally, a believer or religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology)... I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving, concordat between our magisteria---the NOMA concept. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectual grounds, not merely a diplomatic solution...
"Religion is too important for too many people to permit any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents ... a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that the subject of souls lies outside the magisterium of science... As a moral position... I prefer the 'cold bath' theory that nature can be truly 'cruel' and 'indifferent'... because nature does not exist for us... and doesn't give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing... But I recognize that such a position frightens many people, and that a more spiritual view of nature retains broad appeal..." (Pg. 280-282)
He argues, "All life on earth... shares an astonishing range of biochemical similarities... Two possible scenarios... might explain these regularities: either... no other chemistry can work, or these similarities only record the common descent of all organisms on earth from a single origin that happened to feature this chemistry as one possibility among many... We cannot ask a more important question about the nature of life. But, ironically, we also cannot begin to answer this question with the data now at our disposal..." (Pg. 353)
Besides being a highly creative evolutionary theorist, Gould was also a brilliant writer and an engaged "public intellectual." His presence is sorely missed on the scientific and literary scene.
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) wrote in the Introduction to this 1998 book, "I pay my homage to evolution in the preface to every volume of this series, and will now do so again. Of all general themes in science, no other could be so rich, so deep, so fascinating in extension, or so troubling (to our deepest hopes and prejudices) in implication... The wondrously peculiar human brain arose as a product of evolution, replete with odd (and often misleading) modes of reasoning originally developed for other purposes, or for no explicit purpose at all. The brain then discovers the central truth of evolution... And thus, is a kind of almost cosmically wicked recursion, evolution builds the brain, and the brain invents both the culture that must face evolution and the modes of reasoning that might elucidate the process of its own creation."
He suggests, "If we dismiss those scientists now judged wrong, only valuing them if they eventually saw the light, we will miss a grand opportunity to address one of the most elusive and portentous questions in scholarly life. What is the nature of genius; why, among brilliant people, do some make revolutions and others die in the dust of concepts whose time had begun to pass in their own day? What is the crucial difference between Darwin's transcendent greatness and [James Dwight] Dana's merely ordinary greatness?... I do not know the answer... but we can surely specify a key ingredient. Somehow, for some reason of psyche or quirk of mind, some impetus of social life or some drive of temperament, Darwin was driven to challenge, to be fearless in bringing down an intellectual universe... Dana, for other properties of the same attributes, could not, dared not, abandon the traditional hope and succor of centuries..." (Pg. 117-118)
He comments on Pope John Paul II's October 22, 1996 statement strongly supporting evolution before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: "the Catholic Church ... has long accepted both the legitimacy of evolution as a field of study and the potential harmony of evolutionary conclusions with Catholic faith... I knew that Pope Pius XII (not one of my favorite figures in twentieth-century history, to say the least) had made the primary statement in a 1950 encyclical entitled 'Humani Generis'... Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature.
"I also knew that I had no problem with this argument---for, whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject... Pope Pius XII... had properly acknowledged and respected the separate domains of science and theology. Thus, I found myself in total agreement with Humani Generis---but I had never read the document in full..." (Pg. 273)
He continues, "I quickly got the relevant writings from... the Internet... I finally understand why the recent statement seems so new, revealing, and worthy of all those headlines. And the message could not be more welcome for evolutionists, and friends of both science and religion... Humani Generis focuses on the Magisterium (or Teaching Authority) of the Church... We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed 'conflict' or 'warfare' between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority---and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or 'non-overlapping magisteria'). The net of science covers the empirical realm... The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry ... To cite the usual clichés, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of age we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven." (Pg. 273-274)
He summarizes, "Pius had grudgingly admitted evolution as a legitimate hypothesis that he regarded as only tentatively supported and potentially (as he clearly hoped) untrue. John Paul, nearly fifty years later, reaffirms the legitimacy of evolution under the NOMA principle... but then adds that additional data and theory have placed the factuality of evolution beyond reasonable doubt.... I am not, personally, a believer or religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology)... I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving, concordat between our magisteria---the NOMA concept. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectual grounds, not merely a diplomatic solution...
"Religion is too important for too many people to permit any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents ... a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that the subject of souls lies outside the magisterium of science... As a moral position... I prefer the 'cold bath' theory that nature can be truly 'cruel' and 'indifferent'... because nature does not exist for us... and doesn't give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing... But I recognize that such a position frightens many people, and that a more spiritual view of nature retains broad appeal..." (Pg. 280-282)
He argues, "All life on earth... shares an astonishing range of biochemical similarities... Two possible scenarios... might explain these regularities: either... no other chemistry can work, or these similarities only record the common descent of all organisms on earth from a single origin that happened to feature this chemistry as one possibility among many... We cannot ask a more important question about the nature of life. But, ironically, we also cannot begin to answer this question with the data now at our disposal..." (Pg. 353)
Besides being a highly creative evolutionary theorist, Gould was also a brilliant writer and an engaged "public intellectual." His presence is sorely missed on the scientific and literary scene.
May 13, 2024
This 1998 volume is Gould's eighth collection of his monthly articles in Natural History magazine. It is good, but not quite as good as his earlier collections. This one has more history and editorializing and less hard-core evolutionary science. Like many of us, Gould seems to have had gotten more preachy and prone to pontificating as he got older.
There are still some fascinating stuff here. He makes a convincing case that the scientific drawing of fish and shellfish changed when the 1850's English fad for home aquariums got people used to viewing fish from the side rather than top down. There is a funny essay about the great biologist Carl Linnaeus, known as "the father of taxonomy", who tried to label the clams with human sexual parts. He includes a drawing by Linnaeus showing a clam's anus, buttocks, labia and vulva.
His arguments about human evolution did not have the benefit of the modern DNA results from ancient human relics, but he was broadly correct. Neanderthals and homo sapiens co-existed and interbreed. The homo sapiens evolutionary tree is more like a bush than a line.
it is also amusing to find him consulting the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Barlett's Quotations for facts that we would Google without hesitation.
Every time I read one of these volumes, I am amazed at how hard Gould worked each month to produce deeply researched and well thought out essays on a huge variety of topics.
There are still some fascinating stuff here. He makes a convincing case that the scientific drawing of fish and shellfish changed when the 1850's English fad for home aquariums got people used to viewing fish from the side rather than top down. There is a funny essay about the great biologist Carl Linnaeus, known as "the father of taxonomy", who tried to label the clams with human sexual parts. He includes a drawing by Linnaeus showing a clam's anus, buttocks, labia and vulva.
His arguments about human evolution did not have the benefit of the modern DNA results from ancient human relics, but he was broadly correct. Neanderthals and homo sapiens co-existed and interbreed. The homo sapiens evolutionary tree is more like a bush than a line.
it is also amusing to find him consulting the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Barlett's Quotations for facts that we would Google without hesitation.
Every time I read one of these volumes, I am amazed at how hard Gould worked each month to produce deeply researched and well thought out essays on a huge variety of topics.
August 21, 2019
Gould is the liberal artist's scientist, with his lovely broad education and interests in the arts, literature, and baseball leavens his mission to be a translator for science. I see him as sort of the ur-american public intellectual of the late last century, with a style that is primarily Victorian with punctuation of Marx (Groucho), or Keillor sprinkled with Click and Clack. His love of Darwin and arguments against and for (and during!) the early establishment of evolution has a strange side-effect in these self indulgent essays, in that his writing style is verbose in a way that Victorian gentlemen would appreciate, as well as older WGBH subscribers. As a result the first half of this book was a chore, searching for ideas of interest amidst his overwrought and self satisfied style. Nonetheless, the NOMA and Boyle articles were fascinating to me and talks about intellectual history in an exhilarating way, and the essay on the Taino was first rate, so it's a decidedly mixed bag. I would also occasionally accept his overwrought nature in that he does seem to have an excited curiosity which can be infectious.
Favorite/Overused word: "fatuous"
Favorite/Overused word: "fatuous"
February 18, 2018
I’ve stuck with Stephen Gould through 17 years’ worth of essays, and I find him to be more garrulous with age. For a natural science writer, it is unique to find so many references to Gilbert & Sullivan and baseball. Yet, it is his ability to unite the themes of the Mikado with advances in biology that make him a credit to his field. In every essay there is a sharp wit and awe of nature that is contagious. Who else would spend 12 pages documenting the inversion of natural phenomenon? Through stories of sponges eating fish, and flies eating frogs, or of the complex development of parasites, Gould pokes at our preconceptions and exposes a more nuanced view of nature. Combined with his wide ranging interests outside of science, his knowledge of history and his facility with languages, he is able to produce a unique synthesis of deep and popular science. Some essays were better than others, but 4 stars overall.
September 18, 2018
To be honest, I picked this book because I loved the title. I found the series of essays to be highly intelligent and wide ranging. The compilation of essays is about 20 years old, as some of the essays allude to events which are decades old, and yet there are some sections which are prescient to the times we find ourselves living in today. Many times I had to read paragraphs 2 or 3 times, simply because Mr. Gould packs so much into a sentence, and also I've probably turned into a lazy reader what with social media and all. I feel like my brain got a much needed work out and I enjoyed delving into a subject I wouldn't normally stop to think about, i.e., Natural History. I will endeavor to put books of that genre onto my reading list!
July 3, 2023
There are some gems in here for sure, but oh dear, oh dear, what has become of Stephen J Gould, the incomparable explainer of evolution and the history of science - the Asimov of natural history? I'd paused reading these collections a while back because the once sparkling essays were becoming bloated with their own self-importance, and taking longer and longer to get to the point; this collection takes the trend over the edge, where the point seems to be the same every time, and no matter where the topic starts, eventually it pivots around to the same thing.
I gave it a grudging three because... well, mainly because of the Leonardo essay. Who knew that Leonardo was into fossils, and got everything right centuries before anyone else?
I gave it a grudging three because... well, mainly because of the Leonardo essay. Who knew that Leonardo was into fossils, and got everything right centuries before anyone else?
October 3, 2017
Gould has the unique ability to turn science writing into literature and this set of essays is Gould at his best. His clarity of thought and his ability to set the reader into the historical milieu of whatever subject he writes about creates a passion in the reader in much the same way a good mystery writer does. You will also find his NOMA proposal in this set of essays, an idea still be debated today.
September 4, 2025
Another compendium (the eighth) of Gould's essays for Natural History Magazine on evolution and anthropology. This one is a little less consistent than the others. I've read about 4 of this series, and he's a great writer, but I guess it's tough to meet the monthly deadline with fresh and interesting material for so many years, and a few of these are duds. I recommend The Flamingo's Smile over this one. Rest in Peace Mr Gould (1942-2002)
April 30, 2023
I really admire Gould's interest in bringing natural science with the humanities. But in attempting to do that, this book really shows it's age. Braiding Sweetgrass accomplishes similar things, but better and more fresh.
July 9, 2018
Some of the essays were superb!
September 26, 2018
A series of 22 short essays about science and evolution by one of my favorite science authors.
March 15, 2020
A few of the essays were too dry and technical for me, but I enjoyed the majority of the pieces.
December 3, 2021
La ciencia ha impregnado a todo nuestro mundo: incluyendo arte y sociedad. Lo que ha dicho y hecho el hombre para entender el mundo natural es impresionante.
March 2, 2017
Lots of versions of the explanation that evolution is not a march of progress. It is a crazy array of adaptations to specific circumstances.
July 9, 2009
I started reading Natural History magazine several years ago, because I loved the essays of Stephen Jay Gould that appeared in each monthly issue; each essay had something to do with evolution (with Charles Darwin’s name invoked regularly), and were quite entertaining reading, along with being educational. Alas, Gould died in 2002; but his Natural History magazine essays have been collected in several books, of which this present book is the eighth or ninth (I lost count, and the book does not say). And, for those reading this on my weblog who do not wish to read further, I very much enjoyed the book.
As noted, each essay deals with evolution (Gould was for it, by the way). Aside from that focus, the essays cast a wide net, from Leonardo da Vinci to Percival Lowell, from sloths to vultures, from Lewis Carroll to Pope John Paul II, and from Christopher Columbus to the Defenestration of Prague. Gould had a wicked sense of humor, and a genius for writing essays that were entertaining.
In the course of the present book, one learns that if Christopher Columbus had thought to put one of the shells on the beach in his pocket when he touched land on October 12, 1492 that one could determine without a doubt which island in the Bahamas he actually landed on (as the shells are quite specific to each island), that Percival Lowell decided that intelligent beings had canals on Mars because he thought he saw plant life through his microscope (he reasoned that plant life meant animals, that animals must mean sentient beings, that these sentient beings had to be on a higher scale than us, and that the beings had constructed a canal system to get the water from the Mars ice caps to the plant life), and that the Pope’s announcement some years back that evolution was a licit belief for the faithful was news because a previous Pope had said that evolution was licit, but that it was one hypothesis among many (and God willing, the scientists would find another, better, theory).
Gould was at some pains to point out that the current conceptions of evolution as held by the popular mind were in many ways incorrect; mankind is not the natural culmination of evolution, and evolution does not mean an inevitable progress from dumb to smarter. He also enjoyed, in these essays, showing how the by-ways of scientific enquiry can shed light on issues, even if the by-ways led to apparent dead ends.
I have read all of the previous collections of Natural History magazine essays, and I am very happy that this one will go on the shelf next to all of the other collections.
As noted, each essay deals with evolution (Gould was for it, by the way). Aside from that focus, the essays cast a wide net, from Leonardo da Vinci to Percival Lowell, from sloths to vultures, from Lewis Carroll to Pope John Paul II, and from Christopher Columbus to the Defenestration of Prague. Gould had a wicked sense of humor, and a genius for writing essays that were entertaining.
In the course of the present book, one learns that if Christopher Columbus had thought to put one of the shells on the beach in his pocket when he touched land on October 12, 1492 that one could determine without a doubt which island in the Bahamas he actually landed on (as the shells are quite specific to each island), that Percival Lowell decided that intelligent beings had canals on Mars because he thought he saw plant life through his microscope (he reasoned that plant life meant animals, that animals must mean sentient beings, that these sentient beings had to be on a higher scale than us, and that the beings had constructed a canal system to get the water from the Mars ice caps to the plant life), and that the Pope’s announcement some years back that evolution was a licit belief for the faithful was news because a previous Pope had said that evolution was licit, but that it was one hypothesis among many (and God willing, the scientists would find another, better, theory).
Gould was at some pains to point out that the current conceptions of evolution as held by the popular mind were in many ways incorrect; mankind is not the natural culmination of evolution, and evolution does not mean an inevitable progress from dumb to smarter. He also enjoyed, in these essays, showing how the by-ways of scientific enquiry can shed light on issues, even if the by-ways led to apparent dead ends.
I have read all of the previous collections of Natural History magazine essays, and I am very happy that this one will go on the shelf next to all of the other collections.
August 10, 2008
This is not a book I'd normally pick up on my own, since I don't really think of myself as a science lover. However, I've been working my way through our bookshelves, reading the books that I haven't read that look interesting. I've reached my husband's science section, and I have to say that I love Stephen Jay Gould. My husband has been a big fan ever since we met, and I see why. His essays (this book is a collection of essays Gould wrote for Natural History magazine)are fascinating, such as when he wonders what the world looks like from a sloth's point of view. He writes clearly so that a non-scientist can understand his subjects, but he doesn't talk down to his audience. He must have been one of the most well-read, well-rounded people on the planet. He can talk intelligently about 19th century scientists, baseball, philosophy, Broadway musicals and history. He has an amazing vocabulary and makes me feel smart when I read his book. He's an avocate of consulting primary sources when you want to understand something, and he presents things in a very balanced, thoughtful way, rather than trying to sensationalize or politicize. Also, someday I hope to use the word "complexify" in casual conversation. I was only going to read one of my husband's Stephen Jay Gould books as a sampling, then move on, but I'm definately going to read more!
December 13, 2008
this book is probably not the best introduction to the late Stephen Jay Gould's body of work (instead try either: The Flamingo's Smile, Bully for Brontosaurus or Dinosaur in a Haystack), but you simply must read him if you delight in learning more about the world around you and being (classically) entertained at the same time.
These various anthologies of his Essays written for the American Natural History magazine over many years are an enduring legacy of an original scientist, a brilliant educator and wonderful, decent man.
Dr Gould's essays will make you look and question more about the natural (and man-made) world around you each day and provide insights to help understand the origins and history of the ideas and concepts which have shaped and continue to shape our daily lives.
But most of all, I hope you will appreciate the sense of child-like wonderment I did at learning or seeing things previously taken for granted, again, as if for the first time.
These various anthologies of his Essays written for the American Natural History magazine over many years are an enduring legacy of an original scientist, a brilliant educator and wonderful, decent man.
Dr Gould's essays will make you look and question more about the natural (and man-made) world around you each day and provide insights to help understand the origins and history of the ideas and concepts which have shaped and continue to shape our daily lives.
But most of all, I hope you will appreciate the sense of child-like wonderment I did at learning or seeing things previously taken for granted, again, as if for the first time.
July 29, 2010
This has been on my shelf for a long time - it's just always felt too hefty to delve into. I don't know what I was afraid of - Stephen Jay Gould is a very accessible writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book.
I knew little about the topics covered in this book, except for some sketchy background about Darwin, Da Vinci and defenestration(!) Gould brings his erudition and wide knowledge of more than just science to bear on each topic, expounding and expanding in equal measure, building up new perspectives in places and revealing forgotten or unknown details in others.
I've read in other reviews that some of his earlier collections of essays are superior and will be keeping an eye out for them.
I knew little about the topics covered in this book, except for some sketchy background about Darwin, Da Vinci and defenestration(!) Gould brings his erudition and wide knowledge of more than just science to bear on each topic, expounding and expanding in equal measure, building up new perspectives in places and revealing forgotten or unknown details in others.
I've read in other reviews that some of his earlier collections of essays are superior and will be keeping an eye out for them.
October 19, 2013
It's always interesting to see how great minds think. Years ago, I thought the basics of science were quite cut and dried - already figured out centuries ago. Then, as I studied geology, I found what a young science it was, with basics such as superposition and fossils figured out only about two hundred years ago. I heard about conflicting theories and how some of the major tenets, such as continental drift and plate tectonics were ridiculed until the late 1900s. Of course, we expect new developments in medicine and astronomy,but even physics and categorizations of early hominids is being reevaluated.
It does make one wonder what we consider today to be scientific fact will be debunked in the future. Science is evolutionary. Pun intended.
It does make one wonder what we consider today to be scientific fact will be debunked in the future. Science is evolutionary. Pun intended.
February 2, 2011
It was fascinating to read about how Leonardo's remarkable powers of observation enabled him to see the falsity of the story of Noah's flood. Now what's wrong with people today who still believe in such mythological nonsense.
I saw Stephen Jay Gould speak a few weeks before he died, and he knew he was dying. He never told the audience. After the lecture, I wondered why he didn't tell more jokes because I love his sense of humor. Perhaps that is why. Instead he used the time to speak up for the diversity of life and its importance. He's a truly great man, and I miss his stories. He would have written so many more.
I saw Stephen Jay Gould speak a few weeks before he died, and he knew he was dying. He never told the audience. After the lecture, I wondered why he didn't tell more jokes because I love his sense of humor. Perhaps that is why. Instead he used the time to speak up for the diversity of life and its importance. He's a truly great man, and I miss his stories. He would have written so many more.
July 19, 2010
Some of the pop culture references in some of the essays haven't aged well, though there are very few of them.
Nearly every essay follow a pattern of presenting a discredited or overly simplistic point of view and then pointing out in detail why it's wrong. The view could be something Victorians or earlier people thought, or something from contemporary popular science. This format is very popular, it creates tension and drama- but too frequently in other works it is entirely artificial.
The mountain of clams essay in the title has obvious overlap with 'The Seashell on the Mountain'.
Nearly every essay follow a pattern of presenting a discredited or overly simplistic point of view and then pointing out in detail why it's wrong. The view could be something Victorians or earlier people thought, or something from contemporary popular science. This format is very popular, it creates tension and drama- but too frequently in other works it is entirely artificial.
The mountain of clams essay in the title has obvious overlap with 'The Seashell on the Mountain'.
October 10, 2008
Essays are not the most interesting reading, unless the writer has a command of language that grabs, and the content is compelling on a personal level. After over 300 essays for Natural History, Gould must have mastered the form. He was a palentologist, and it seems that the theory of evolution informs/forms his thinking in every other field or subject. This book was fascinating.
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