Product Description

Respected scientist Stephen Jay Gould suggests that perhaps variety--not complexity--is our true measure of excellence. To illustrate his theme, Gould discusses seemingly disparate topics such as a drunkard's walk, the absence of modern Mozarts, the evolution of the horse, the continuing dominance of bacterial life on the planet, and more. 50 illus.

Amazon.com Review

The human mind has a trusty device for simplifying a complex world: reduce to averages and identify trends. Although valuable, the risk is that we ignore variations and end up with a skewed view of reality. In evolutionary terms, the result is a view in which humans are the inevitable pinnacle of evolutionary progress, instead of, as Stephen Jay Gould patiently argues, "a cosmic accident that would never arise again if the tree of life could be replanted." The implications of Gould's argument may threaten certain of our philosophical and religious foundations but will in the end provide us with a clearer view of, and a greater appreciation for, the complexities of our world.

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The Evolution of Darwinism        Rating:

This iconoclastic novel sets out to debunk the common misconception that evolution means that all organisms eventually become more complex as time goes on. Stephen Jay Gould does a great job of illustrating this central theme with many examples, including an interesting one from baseball. It shows that 400 hitting in baseball has disappeared over time, and on the surface it would appear that players have just gotten worse. The truth, however, is that players have actually gotten much better, and started to approach the right tail of a bell curve of human potential. Evolution operates in a similar manner, in which organism complexity is reaching the right tail of a bell curve. He shows that bacteria and other simple organisms actually far outnumber complex animals, and that complex organisms are more likely the exception rather than the rule. It was a very interesting book, and Stephan Jay Gould has a great witty sense of humor. I gave it four stars because it is pretty heavily laden with statistical figures and can get a bit technical at times. I still enjoyed the book very much and would definitely recommend it to someone who is willing to revisit their presuppositions about evolution. The audiocassette was well done, and I really enjoyed the reading of it.

Great Supplement for High School Science Classes        Rating:

There are already several excellent reviews below describing the contents of this book. My purpose for writing is to report that I continue to use it very successfully with high school honor students, and can strongly recommend it as a supplement for honors classes.
Particularly useful are the statistical modeling examples...experiments the students love doing ('hands-on'), such as the drunkard's walk (random deviation from a left wall). Using a coin-flip, the students can repeat the experiment several times and record some excellent data, especially when the entire class is compiled. Then, of course, simulate the data with Excel.
There are several lucid examples which are excellent for class discussion...although the baseball stats get a bit long for the typical HS student.
In 2000, I took a small group of students to the AAAS meeting in Washington DC to meet with SJ after we'd studied his book thoroughly in class. He met with us several times, and it seemed as though we already knew him. He was gracious and engaging, and the students were inspired.
The prose in this book is intimate, honest, and illuminating.
I miss this beautiful man.

Wonderful concept - (somewhat) difficult to read        Rating:

Well....
Gould's message is pure, and correct. We take complexity as a trend ("thing") that is presumably advancing with time, rather than recognizing it as a part of the Full House where there are right or left limitations, etc etc etc... (you can read the book:)

But from a critique point of view, Gould takes his basic concepts and...sort of...picks complicated forums to explain them, for the average reader.
I mean, I hate to say it, but the book could have been one-quarter to one-third shorter than it was, to say what it does...

I accept his conclusions, and I love his work and his contributions to American science and education. Gould was a great guy and a well-needed popularizer of science. But this book is a bit tedious for the lay-reader who has other things to do every day. Its too long - but for those that can tackle it, its an eye opener !

Much better than Taleb and Mandelbrot        Rating:

This book is about how to analyze data. It is the clearest and best written book on the subject I have read so far. Other well known books on the subject include Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Taleb and The Misbehavior of Markets A New Kind of Science by Mandelbrot. Although all these authors are brilliant and their respective books have their merits, Stephen Jay Gould's book is much clearer. While Taleb and Mandelbrot obsess about the flaws of the normal distribution assumption underlying investment theory, they both struggle in offering pragmatic alternatives. Gould instead studies the shape of the entire distribution that he calls the "Full House" and remains comfortable within a traditional statistical framework without building any castle of cards (referring to Mandelbrot fractal geometry).

Gould takes you on a really entertaining quantitative learning expedition by following three separate themes: 1) the disappearance of the 0.400 baseball hitter, 2) his run in with a deadly disease, and 3) the theory of evolution. These themes allow him to flesh out his analytical skills and share with you concepts that are often counterintuitive and occasionally revolutionary.

In his struggle with a deadly disease he illustrates how the median outcome (only 8 months to live) did not worry him much. What mattered to him after studying the related data was the skewness of the distribution with a long right-hand tail (meaning many survivors with normal remaining life span unaffected by the disease). He then studied what were the characteristics of these long term survivors (age, overall health, etc...). He noted he did share these characteristics and sure enough he survived this disease just fine. In his case, the median outcome was irrelevant. It was not his most likely outcome. Within this chapter he also introduces the concept of walls or limits. Many distributions have a left wall as figures can't be negative for many variables including stock prices, income level, and survivors' lifespan. For Gould, `walls' are key because they dictate that the distribution can expand in only the opposite direction.

When he moves on to the disappearance of the 0.400 hitter, Gould shows that the distribution of hitters butts against a right wall (upper limit of human achievement). He observed that the average hitting percentage has not changed much over time. But, the best hitters percentages has declined. Yet, he makes a case that today's hitters are better than the 0.400 hitters of yesteryears. What happened is that all positions improved commensurately (fielders, pitchers). So, the 0.400 stat is not an absolute but a relative measure of when batters outsmarted the other positions. He comes up with this perplexing theorem: "as play improves and bell curves march towards the right wall, variation must shrink at the right tail. The worst players got much better, and so did everybody else. But, the best players margin of relative superiority has consequently shrunk. He measured this phenomena by observing the steady decline of the standard deviation of batting average over the past century. And, indeed it declined steadily. So, in this closed system an improvement in performance was not marked by a rising average, but by a decline in standard deviation. The graphs on page 119 illustrate this complex concept very clearly.

Next, Gould moves on where he left a legacy as a leading evolutionary biologist: the theory evolution. Contrary to what we think the theory of evolution was misnamed. Darwin wanted to use the terms "descent with modification" instead of "evolution." Gould states Darwin referred to "evolution" because he succumbed to the cultural pressure of his era. The latter was obsessed with progress and the superiority of mankind. Gould strongly suggests that Darwin's original phrasing was more accurate. Gould goes on explaining that the animal kingdom history is captured by a right-hand skewed distribution that buts against a left wall of minimal complexity: the bacteria. An animal organism can not be less complex than that. With random mutation managed by natural selection, some species can only become more complex (not less so). Yet, this is not evolution. Bacteria still dominate the animal kingdom. They are more adaptable, more prevalent, more indestructible than any other animal organism. They are the only ones who would survive a nuclear holocaust and who can live in outer space. The process of complexity is somewhat random. Stephen Wolfram had reached the same conclusion in his very strange book, A New Kind of Science where he suggested that evolution was not so evolutionary but random (and replicable through cellular automata processes). Thanks to Gould, I now realize that Darwin and Wolfram pretty much agreed.

In the last chapter, Gould addresses if human culture is butting now against a right-hand wall of human potential. He thinks that is not so much the case in the sciences where he feels we have much more to figure out. But, he feels it is the case in the arts. Will we ever get another Beethoven? Another Shakespeare? Or another Michelangelo? Most probably not. Charles Murray studying the same subject in his excellent Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 reached pretty much the same conclusion.

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