Life's grandeur : the spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin / Stephen Jay Gould.
By: Gould, Stephen Jay
.
Material type: 
BookPublisher: London : Vintage, 1997Description: xx, 244 p. : ill ; 20 cm. + pbk.ISBN: 0099893606.Subject(s): Evolution (Biology) | Natural history | Excellence | NatureDDC classification: 576.8 | Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Lending | MTU Bishopstown Library Lending | 576.8 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00068104 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
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.
Bibliography: p. 231-237. - Includes index.
Part One How shall we read and spot a trend?: Huxley's chessboard -- Darwin amidst the spin doctors -- Different parsings, different images of trends -- Part Two Death and horses: two cases for the primacy of variation: Case one: a personal story -- Case two: life's little joke -- Part Three The model batter: extinction of 0.400 hitting and the improvement of baseball: Stating the problem -- Conventional explanations -- A plausibility argument for general improvement -- 0.400 hitting dies as the right tail shrinks -- Why the death of 0.400 hitting records improvement of play -- A philosophical conclusion -- Part Four The modal bacter: Why progress does not rule the history of life: The bare bones of natural selection -- A preliminary example at smallest scale with some generalities on the evolution of body size -- The power of the modal bacter, or why the tail can't wag the dog -- An epilog on human culture.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Born in New York City in 1941, Stephen Jay Gould received his B.A. from Antioch College in New York in 1963 and a Ph.D. in paleontology from Columbia University in 1967. Gould spent most of his career as a professor at Harvard University and curator of invertebrate paleontology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His research was mainly in the evolution and speciation of land snails.Gould was a leading proponent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium. This theory holds that few evolutionary changes occur among organisms over long periods of time, and then a brief period of rapid changes occurs before another long, stable period of equilibrium sets in. Gould also made significant contributions to the field of evolutionary developmental biology, most notably in his work, Ontogeny and Phylogeny.
An outspoken advocate of the scientific outlook, Gould had been a vigorous defender of evolution against its creation-science opponents in popular magazines focusing on science. He wrote a column for Natural History and has produced a remarkable series of books that display the excitement of science for the layperson. Among his many awards and honors, Gould won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His titles include; Ever Since Darwin, The Panda's Thumb, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory and Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin.
Stephen Jay Gould died on May 20, 2002, following his second bout with cancer. (Bowker Author Biography)