Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Three Rivers Press (1997), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 244 pages
Description
In his characteristically iconoclastic and original way, Stephen Jay Gould argues that progress and increasing complexity are not inevitable features of the evolution of life on Earth. Further, if we wish to see grandeur in life, we must discard our selfish and anthropocentric view of evolution and learn to see it as Darwin did, as the random but unfathomably rich source of 'endless forms most beautiful and wonderful'. Any rational view of nature tells us that we are a simple branch on an immense bush; and that life on Earth is remarkable not for where it is leading, but for the fullness and constancy of its variety, ingenuity and diversity.
User reviews
LibraryThing member bragan
Gould's main point in this book is that evolution has no intrinsic drive towards "progress" or increasing complexity, and that the fact that there are organisms which have gotten more complex over time is mainly down to the fact that there's more freedom of variation in that direction; whereas
I must admit that I did feel a bit impatient with what seemed to me to be a lot of belaboring of fairly simple concepts, but Gould's discussion of how statistics can mean very different things than they first appear to once considered from a different perspective is clear, worthwhile and interesting. Unfortunately for me, he also devotes a full quarter of the book to examining baseball statistics in order to answer the question of why nobody manages a .400 batting average anymore, a problem that he sees as very similar, conceptually, to the evolution issue. I say "unfortunately," because, while the mathematics was interesting enough, baseball is one subject pretty much guaranteed to make my eyes glaze over and my brain shut down from sheer apathy.
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there's a lower limit to how simple anything can be. This seems to me to be so incredibly obvious that I'm slightly surprised that anyone thought it necessary to devote an entire book to arguing it. But I guess I could be wrong about that; certainly Gould seems to think he's saying something terribly controversial here.I must admit that I did feel a bit impatient with what seemed to me to be a lot of belaboring of fairly simple concepts, but Gould's discussion of how statistics can mean very different things than they first appear to once considered from a different perspective is clear, worthwhile and interesting. Unfortunately for me, he also devotes a full quarter of the book to examining baseball statistics in order to answer the question of why nobody manages a .400 batting average anymore, a problem that he sees as very similar, conceptually, to the evolution issue. I say "unfortunately," because, while the mathematics was interesting enough, baseball is one subject pretty much guaranteed to make my eyes glaze over and my brain shut down from sheer apathy.
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LibraryThing member iayork
Another Superb Offering : I have been rereading several books in my library on natural selection and came across this one sandwiched between "wonderful Life" and "Eight Little Piggies". The late Stephen Gould was near the top of my "best science writer" list. This was not due to only his literary
His own theories on species creation have been debated extensively but this book is all about contrast. On the one hand he stresses over and over that evolution is without guidance, meaningless to the change that is occurring. The story of the "evolution" of the horse is a good example with the point being that it is a FAILED end-product of evolution. In the huge bush of horse ancestors only one remains. Again, he points out that evolutionary changes were not done for the purpose of a future species. We, as human beings, naturally see current organisms as the final state of a long, continuously evolving pathway. This is absolutely wrong - we are simply at our current state and that's it
A good portion of the book was give over to the question, "Why are there no .400 hitters in baseball?" Paradoxically, he demonstrates that the extinction of this breed is a sign of overall general increase in excellence. This is the paradox - although natural selection is not directed by purpose our own actions are. Of the 50 million species only ours is aware that we are only one of 50 million. ALong the way we get acquainted with a variety of mathematical models, particularly the infamous bell curve that says so much depending on which way it is slanted. Overall - A
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quality (very high) but to both the always intriguing subject matter and his gentle exposition of natural selection. Unlike some scientists (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) he feels no need to bash, ridicule, insult or fight those who disagree with his view. His own theories on species creation have been debated extensively but this book is all about contrast. On the one hand he stresses over and over that evolution is without guidance, meaningless to the change that is occurring. The story of the "evolution" of the horse is a good example with the point being that it is a FAILED end-product of evolution. In the huge bush of horse ancestors only one remains. Again, he points out that evolutionary changes were not done for the purpose of a future species. We, as human beings, naturally see current organisms as the final state of a long, continuously evolving pathway. This is absolutely wrong - we are simply at our current state and that's it
A good portion of the book was give over to the question, "Why are there no .400 hitters in baseball?" Paradoxically, he demonstrates that the extinction of this breed is a sign of overall general increase in excellence. This is the paradox - although natural selection is not directed by purpose our own actions are. Of the 50 million species only ours is aware that we are only one of 50 million. ALong the way we get acquainted with a variety of mathematical models, particularly the infamous bell curve that says so much depending on which way it is slanted. Overall - A
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LibraryThing member chrisadami
Gould's book on baseball statistics, and whether evolution leads from simplicity to complexity. He is good about baseball statistics, but knows nothing about what complexity is. Read Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" for how complexity evolves.
LibraryThing member drbubbles
Somewhat repetetive; this may be annoying to some, but although I did notice it, I found it tolerable because it helped hammer in his points about changing the way one thinks.
LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Interesting. Makes a great deal of sense now that it's pointed out - a matter of considering the spread of variation rather than only looking at the extremes (or only considering _one_ extreme!). I learned some stuff about a subject that I usually ignore - baseball - and saw some applications for a
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subject I know and enjoy - probability. Fun. This one didn't overwhelm me the way his single-subject books usually do - dealing with two main subjects (though illustrating a single point) spread the info enough that I didn't feel swamped with details. Show Less
LibraryThing member psiloiordinary
An enjoyable book, apart form one really annoying issue which will now dominate this review.
What on earth is 400 hitting in baseball? Why doesn't either Gould or his publisher have enough of a sense of their place in this big wide world to explain it - even just in a footnote or an appendix?
It's
Anyway - the book is actually about statistics and how the typical human being's prejudices about how we view the world get in the way of seeing the truth. Moderately interesting and as usual well written by a great practitioner of getting scientifically difficult concepts across to the lay man - ironically he reveals a similar blind spot to that which he exposes by his lack of knowledge that the world series was named after a newspaper and was not called "world" because the whole world knows about baseball.
What on earth is 400 hitting in baseball? Why doesn't either Gould or his publisher have enough of a sense of their place in this big wide world to explain it - even just in a footnote or an appendix?
It's
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not as if it's cricket, is it?Anyway - the book is actually about statistics and how the typical human being's prejudices about how we view the world get in the way of seeing the truth. Moderately interesting and as usual well written by a great practitioner of getting scientifically difficult concepts across to the lay man - ironically he reveals a similar blind spot to that which he exposes by his lack of knowledge that the world series was named after a newspaper and was not called "world" because the whole world knows about baseball.
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LibraryThing member addunn3
Does evolution mean "progress"? Interesting reading, though somewhat repetitive. Great examples to help understand the concepts he addresses.
LibraryThing member ajlewis2
I listened to half the audiobook. I did not disagree with him and even enjoyed bits. The problem is that the book goes into such great depth that it became utterly boring to me. There were probably a couple of hours dedicated to baseball statistics and then on to the size of horses. Listening to
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all that began to sound like blah, blah, blah. The written word with tables and graphs or done in a lecture hall over a period of a semester, this would probably be very good. Listening to the audiobook an hour at a time is a pretty bad experience. Good information and thinking, but just too much data especially to listen to. Show Less
LibraryThing member booktsunami
I admit to coming to this book with a slightly unjustified negative bias. I'm not sure where I picked this up but I had the impression that SJG was both a "bit full of himself" and maybe not all that trustworthy anyway with his science. Can't recall where I picked up these impressions because I
SJG's next point is that evolution is not necessarily towards increasing complexity or sophistication. And he goes to great lengths with a baseball analogy to show that where there are walls or limits to change (or scores) then this effectively prevents evolution in certain directions. I must confess that I think one of his diagrams is just plain wrong. It's that on p119 where he has batter's averages in earlier years ..say up to 1930 with a fairly wide spread in the standard deviation and a figure for more recent years where the standard deviation is narrower. In the second case he has moved the whole distribution closer to the right wall, claiming that the overall standard of play has improved (both by batters and pitchers). However, his X axis is the batting average and the mean figure hasn't changed. so the distributions should be one under the other ...not moved closer to the wall. The average hasn't moved closer to the wall at all. Improvement in play is not from moving closer to the wall but by the narrowing of the standard deviation. He seems dot assume that his batter's average is a measure of the objective quality of batting, but it's really a ratio which doesn't change much because the pitchers have also improved.
Actually, I found the whole baseball segment overwrought to make a fairly simple point. I suspect SJG was trying to express his common touch with the rest of humanity. (Through the baseball analogy) ......though his writing style belies this. I took a couple of samples of his prose and ran it through the Flesch test of readability. It came in at 44 and 45 which means that it's difficult to read (Grade 13). And I would concur. It's hard work mainly because he both uses big words, long sentences, and lots of expansions on ideas within the sentences (or qualifying statements). Here is a fairly typical Gouldian paragraph "This last-ditch defense of equine progress cannot be sustained. The conventional trends are by no means pervasive (though their relative frequency does increase through the bush, albeit in a fitful way). Several late lineages negate the most prominent trends, and a different outcome for the history of horses perfectly plausible in our world of contingency (see Gould, 1989)-would have compelled a radically altered tale". Not easy reading ...and not because of scientific words.
I did like his debunking of the ladder--like sequencing of the evolution of the horse and other popularisations of evolution. And I did like the diagram on p165 showing the expansion of mean and extreme values within branching evolutionary sequence. Though I did find myself wondering whether the left "wall" was truly a wall. I guess it's only a wall if the species can't degrade or regress into its ancestral form. And I'm not so convinced by this. Ok if you define a species as a strain that can't interbreed with ancestral forms then this may be correct. But at the borderline where new species are being formed there is a certain element of plasticity around interbreeding and hybridisation. And Darwin made the point that the fancy varieties of pigeons (like tumblers etc) that had been bred...if left to their own devices, would quickly revert to the common rock pigeon. OK a variety is not the same as a species...but it's also a question of exactly where one draws the line. And around the line there will be some fertile interbreeding.
I also found his logic a bit strange with the discussion of foraminifera (forams) (Fig 23 on p154). Ok he demonstrates that in three different geological periods forams started small in size but over time displayed a great range of specie sizes. But always the smallest sized predominates so (he claims) there is no trend to increased complexity. It's just what you expect when there is a "wall" a lower limit. In this case, the "wall" is 0.15mm because this is the smallest mesh size used to filter out the forams. But surely this is an artificial wall and there will be species which were initially washed down the drain but then, over time, some of those species increased in size and were then picked up in the sieves where it was registered as just another "small" species. around 0.15 mm. Probably doesn't destroy his argument about small sizes predominating and the larger sizes being a "tail" but it just seems a bit sloppy logic to me.
I did like the diagram on p180 and his associated commentary. He makes the point that animals and plants are just a small twig on the evolutionary chart ...and humans an even smaller twig. It does put things in perspective....though, I guess, I have long been aware of the predominance of bacteria and fungi (and viruses and phage ) among the living things. Actually, I understand that the phage actually outnumber bacteria by about 2:1 so SJG was also wrong about the bacteria being the modal life forms. (Though arguable if phage are truly independent life forms....however, even humans rely on eating plants and animals to survive so are we independent life forms?).
So where do I sit after reading and considering the book. I must confess that I'm impressed. he does introduce some radical ideas and argues for them very cogently...albeit with (to my eye anyway) a few slips. His writing style is a bit overwrought ...but understandable and sometimes quite delightful. I was going to give it 4 stars but I think I'll upgrade that to 5 and I might even seek out some more of his work.
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haven't read any of his books to date but certainly there was some reference in the work of EO Wilson to the effect that SJG was not a pleasant work colleague. Anyway, I shall try and put that behind me and review objectively. First, I find myself agreeing with the general thrust of SJG argument: that is, that the bacteria are the dominant species on the earth and always have been. (Though this ignores viruses as a life form because I suspect that viruses are probably greater in number and variety than the bacteria).SJG's next point is that evolution is not necessarily towards increasing complexity or sophistication. And he goes to great lengths with a baseball analogy to show that where there are walls or limits to change (or scores) then this effectively prevents evolution in certain directions. I must confess that I think one of his diagrams is just plain wrong. It's that on p119 where he has batter's averages in earlier years ..say up to 1930 with a fairly wide spread in the standard deviation and a figure for more recent years where the standard deviation is narrower. In the second case he has moved the whole distribution closer to the right wall, claiming that the overall standard of play has improved (both by batters and pitchers). However, his X axis is the batting average and the mean figure hasn't changed. so the distributions should be one under the other ...not moved closer to the wall. The average hasn't moved closer to the wall at all. Improvement in play is not from moving closer to the wall but by the narrowing of the standard deviation. He seems dot assume that his batter's average is a measure of the objective quality of batting, but it's really a ratio which doesn't change much because the pitchers have also improved.
Actually, I found the whole baseball segment overwrought to make a fairly simple point. I suspect SJG was trying to express his common touch with the rest of humanity. (Through the baseball analogy) ......though his writing style belies this. I took a couple of samples of his prose and ran it through the Flesch test of readability. It came in at 44 and 45 which means that it's difficult to read (Grade 13). And I would concur. It's hard work mainly because he both uses big words, long sentences, and lots of expansions on ideas within the sentences (or qualifying statements). Here is a fairly typical Gouldian paragraph "This last-ditch defense of equine progress cannot be sustained. The conventional trends are by no means pervasive (though their relative frequency does increase through the bush, albeit in a fitful way). Several late lineages negate the most prominent trends, and a different outcome for the history of horses perfectly plausible in our world of contingency (see Gould, 1989)-would have compelled a radically altered tale". Not easy reading ...and not because of scientific words.
I did like his debunking of the ladder--like sequencing of the evolution of the horse and other popularisations of evolution. And I did like the diagram on p165 showing the expansion of mean and extreme values within branching evolutionary sequence. Though I did find myself wondering whether the left "wall" was truly a wall. I guess it's only a wall if the species can't degrade or regress into its ancestral form. And I'm not so convinced by this. Ok if you define a species as a strain that can't interbreed with ancestral forms then this may be correct. But at the borderline where new species are being formed there is a certain element of plasticity around interbreeding and hybridisation. And Darwin made the point that the fancy varieties of pigeons (like tumblers etc) that had been bred...if left to their own devices, would quickly revert to the common rock pigeon. OK a variety is not the same as a species...but it's also a question of exactly where one draws the line. And around the line there will be some fertile interbreeding.
I also found his logic a bit strange with the discussion of foraminifera (forams) (Fig 23 on p154). Ok he demonstrates that in three different geological periods forams started small in size but over time displayed a great range of specie sizes. But always the smallest sized predominates so (he claims) there is no trend to increased complexity. It's just what you expect when there is a "wall" a lower limit. In this case, the "wall" is 0.15mm because this is the smallest mesh size used to filter out the forams. But surely this is an artificial wall and there will be species which were initially washed down the drain but then, over time, some of those species increased in size and were then picked up in the sieves where it was registered as just another "small" species. around 0.15 mm. Probably doesn't destroy his argument about small sizes predominating and the larger sizes being a "tail" but it just seems a bit sloppy logic to me.
I did like the diagram on p180 and his associated commentary. He makes the point that animals and plants are just a small twig on the evolutionary chart ...and humans an even smaller twig. It does put things in perspective....though, I guess, I have long been aware of the predominance of bacteria and fungi (and viruses and phage ) among the living things. Actually, I understand that the phage actually outnumber bacteria by about 2:1 so SJG was also wrong about the bacteria being the modal life forms. (Though arguable if phage are truly independent life forms....however, even humans rely on eating plants and animals to survive so are we independent life forms?).
So where do I sit after reading and considering the book. I must confess that I'm impressed. he does introduce some radical ideas and argues for them very cogently...albeit with (to my eye anyway) a few slips. His writing style is a bit overwrought ...but understandable and sometimes quite delightful. I was going to give it 4 stars but I think I'll upgrade that to 5 and I might even seek out some more of his work.
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Subjects
Awards
Audie Award (Finalist — 1997)
Original publication date
1996
Physical description
244 p.; 5.98 inches
ISBN
0609801406 / 9780609801406
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