Stephen Jay Gould

Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights.

A collection of thirty-five essays--representing the best of the column "This View of Life" from "Natural History" magazine--focuses on the themes of evolution and of the innumerable oddities of nature

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived--a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived--a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

Waren die Dinosaurier wirklich dümmer als Eidechsen? Warum werden eigentlich immer ungefähr gleich viele Männer wie Frauen geboren? Wie kam der berühmte Dr. Down zu seiner "Mongolismus"-Theorie und ihren rassistischen Implikationen? Inwiefern spiegelt die Entwicklung der Mickey Mouse unsere eigene Entwicklung wider? Was erzählen uns der magische "Daumen" des Pandas und die lose Wanderung der Seeschildkröte über die Unvollkommenheiten, die die Evolution beweisen? Bei aller Vielfalt ihrer Themen stehen die brillanten Essays Stephen Jay Goulds doch in einem präzisen Zusammenhang: in ihrem Bezug zur Evolutionstheorie, die Gould in ihrer avanciertesten Version vertritt.

Ranging as far as the fox and as deep as the hedgehog (the urchin of his title), Stephen Jay Gould expands on geology, biological determinism, "cardboard Darwinism," and evolutionary theory in this sparkling collection.

Examines scientific theories pertaining to the measurement of earth's history

"Gould himself is a rare and wonderful animal—a member of the endangered species known as the ruby-throated polymath. . . . [He] is a leading theorist on large-scale patterns in evolution . . . [and] one of the sharpest and most humane thinkers in the sciences." --David Quammen, New York Times Book Review

“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” was Haeckel’s answer—the wrong one—to the most vexing question of nineteenth-century biology: what is the relationship between individual development (ontogeny) and the evolution of species and lineages (phylogeny)? In this, the first major book on the subject in fifty years, Stephen Jay Gould documents the history of the idea of recapitulation from its first appearance among the pre-Socratics to its fall in the early twentieth century. Mr. Gould explores recapitulation as an idea that intrigued politicians and theologians as well as scientists. He shows that Haeckel’s hypothesis—that human fetuses with gill slits are, literally, tiny fish, exact replicas of their water-breathing ancestors—had an influence that extended beyond biology into education, criminology, psychoanalysis (Freud and Jung were devout recapitulationists), and racism. The theory of recapitulation, Gould argues, finally collapsed not from the weight of contrary data, but because the rise of Mendelian genetics rendered it untenable. Turning to modern concepts, Gould demonstrates that, even though the whole subject of parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny fell into disrepute, it is still one of the great themes of evolutionary biology. Heterochrony—changes in developmental timing, producing parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny—is shown to be crucial to an understanding of gene regulation, the key to any rapprochement between molecular and evolutionary biology. Gould argues that the primary evolutionary value of heterochrony may lie in immediate ecological advantages for slow or rapid maturation, rather than in long-term changes of form, as all previous theories proclaimed. Neoteny—the opposite of recapitulation—is shown to be the most important determinant of human evolution. We have evolved by retaining the juvenile characters of our ancestors and have achieved both behavioral flexibility and our characteristic morphology thereby (large brains by prolonged retention of rapid fetal growth rates, for example). Gould concludes that “there may be nothing new under the sun, but permutation of the old within complex systems can do wonders. As biologists, we deal directly with the kind of material complexity that confers an unbounded potential upon simple, continuous changes in underlying processes. This is the chief joy of our science.”

Featuring an introduction by Stephen Jay Gould, "Genetics and the Origin of Species" presents the first edition of Dobzhansky's groundbreaking and now classic inquiry into what has emerged as the most important single area of scientific inquiry in the twentieth century: biological theory of evolution. Genetics and the Origin of Species went through three editions (1937, 1941, and 1951) in which the importance accorded natural selection changed radically.