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• * Introduction *1. What Every Paleontologist Knows
• * An Introductory Example * Testimonials to Common Knowledge * Darwinian Solutions and Paradoxes * The Paradox of Insulation from Disproof * The Paradox of Stymied Practice
• *2. The Primary Claims of Punctuated Equilibrium
• * Data and Definitions * Microevolutionary Links * Macroevolutionary Implications * Tempo and the Significance of Stasis * Mode and the Speciational Foundation of Macroevolution
• *3. The Scientific Debate on Punctuated Equilibrium: Critiques and Responses
• * Critiques Based on the Definability of Paleontological Species * Empirical Affirmation * Reasons for a Potential Systematic Underestimation of Biospecies by Paleospecies * Reasons for a Potential Systematic Overestimation of Biospecies by Paleospecies * Reasons Why an Observed Punctuational Pattern Might Not Represent Speciation * Critiques Based on Denying Events of Speciation as the Primary Locus of Change * Critiques Based on Supposed Failures of Empirical Results to Affirm Predictions of Punctuated Equilibrium * Claims for Empirical Refutation by Cases * Phenotypes * Genotypes * Empirical Tests of Conformity with Models
• *4. Sources of Data for Testing Punctuated Equilibrium
• * Preamble * The Equilibrium in Punctuated Equilibrium: Quantitatively Documented Patterns of Stasis in Unbranched Segments of Lineages * The Punctuations of Punctuated Equilibrium: Tempo and Mode in the Origin of Paleospecies * The Inference of Cladogenesis by the Criterion of Ancestral Survival * The "Dissection" of Punctuations to Infer Both Existence and Modality * Time * Geography * Morphometric Mode * Proper and Adequate Tests of Relative Frequencies: The Strong Empirical Validation of Punctuated Equilibrium * The Indispensability of Data on Relative Frequencies * Relative Frequencies for Higher Taxa in Entire Biotas * Relative Frequencies for Entire Clades * Causal Clues from Differential Patterns of Relative Frequencies
• *5. The Broader Implications of Punctuated Equilibrium for Evolutionary Theory and General Notions of Change
• * What Changes May Punctuated Equilibrium Instigate in Our Views about Evolutionary Mechanisms and the History of Life? * The Explanation and Broader Meaning of Stasis * Frequency * Generality * Causality * Punctuation, the Origin of New Macroevolutionary Individuals, and Resulting Implications for Evolutionary Theory * Trends * The Speciational Reformulation of Macroevolution * Ecological and Higher-Level Extensions * Punctuation All the Way Up and Down? The Generalization and Broader Utility of Punctuated Equilibrium (in More Than a Metaphorical Sense) at Other Levels of Evolution, and for Other Disciplines In and Outside the Natural Sciences * General Models for Punctuated Equilibrium * Punctuational Change at Other Levels and Scales of Evolution * A Preliminary Note on Homology and Analogy in the Conceptual Realm * Punctuation Below the Species Level * Punctuation Above the Species Level * Punctuational Models in Other Disciplines: Towards a General Theory of Change * Principles for a Choice of Examples * Examples from the History of Human Artifacts and Cultures * Examples from Human Institutions and Theories about the Natural World * Two Concluding Examples, a General Statement, and a Coda
• * Appendix: A Largely Sociological (and Fully Partisan) History of the Impact and Critique of Punctuated Equilibrium
• * The Entrance of Punctuated Equilibrium into Common Language and General Culture * An Episodic History of Punctuated Equilibrium * Early Stages and Future Contexts * Creationist Misappropriation of Punctuated Equilibrium * Punctuated Equilibrium in Journalism and Textbooks * The Personal Aspect of Professional Reaction * The Case Ad Hominem against Punctuated Equilibrium * An Interlude on Sources of Error * The Wages of Jealousy * The Descent to Nastiness * The Most Unkindest Cut of All * The Wisdom of Agassiz's and von Baer's Threefold History of Scientific Ideas * A Coda on the Kindness and Generosity of Most Colleagues
• * Notes * Bibliography * Illustration Credits * Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould took the scientific world by storm with his paper on punctuated equilibrium, written with Niles Eldredge. Challenging a core assumption of Darwin's theory of evolution, it launched the career of one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of our time--perhaps the best known since Darwin. Now, thirty-five years later, and five years after his untimely death, Punctuated Equilibrium (originally published as the central chapter of Gould's masterwork, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory) offers his only book-length testament on an idea he fiercely promoted, repeatedly refined, and tirelessly defended. Punctuated equilibrium holds that the great majority of species originate in geological moments (punctuations) and persist in stasis. The idea was hotly debated because it forced biologists to rethink entrenched ideas about evolutionary patterns and processes. But as Gould shows here in his typically exhaustive coverage, the idea has become the foundation of a new view of hierarchical selection and macroevolution. What emerges strikingly from this book is that punctuated equilibrium represents a much broader paradigm about the nature of change--a worldview that may be judged as a distinctive and important movement within recent intellectual history. Indeed we may now be living within a punctuation, and our awareness of what this means may be the enduring legacy of one of America's best-loved scientists.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• pt.
• 1. Heaven and Earth
• pt.
• 2. Literature and science
• pt.
• 3. Origins, stability, and extinction
• pt.
• 4. Writing about snails
• pt.
• 5. The glory of museums
• pt.
• 6. Disparate faces of Eugenes.

From fads to fungus, baseball to beeswax, Gould always circles back to the great themes of time, change, and history, carrying readers home to the centering theme of evolution.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has perfected the art of the essay in this brilliant new collection. These thirty-four essays, most originally published in Natural History magazine, exemplify the keen insight with which Dr. Gould observes the natural world and convey the infectious enthusiasm for fossils and evolutionary theory that has made his books award-winning, national best-sellers. In his latest musings on evolution and other natural phenomena, Gould reveals the uncanny interconnections among distinctly human creations - museums, literature, music, politics, and culture - encompassing a delightfully, wide range of topics, from giant fossils, fads, and fungus to baseball, beeswax, and blaauwbocks, from a humanistic look at Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Erasmus Darwin's poetry to the fallacies of eugenics and creationism and the moral imperatives of thinking people to meet the ethical challenges that pseudo-science presents.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• pt.
• 1. How shall we read and spot a trend?
• pt.
• 2. Death and horses : two cases for the primacy of variation
• pt.
• 3. The model batter : extinction of 0.400 hitting and the improvement of baseball
• pt.
• 4. The modal bacter : why progress does not rule the history of life.

Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this "full house" of variation, and not as the progress or degeneration of an average value, or single thing.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Originally published: New York: Harmony Books, c1996.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In his final book, Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
In his ?nal book and his ?rst full-length original title since Full House in 1996, the eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long. In building his case, Gould shows why the common assumption of an inescapable conflict between science and the humanities is false, mounts a spirited rebuttal to the ideas that his intellectual rival E. O. Wilson set forth in his book Consilience, and explains why the pursuit of knowledge must always operate upon the bedrock of nature's randomness. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is a controversial discourse, rich with facts and observations gathered by one of the most erudite minds of our time.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Gould's final essay collection is based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine--exactly 300 consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific discovery and the most personal book he ever published.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Here is bestselling scientist Stephen Jay Gould's tenth and final collection based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine--exactly 300 consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific discovery and the most personal book he has ever published, I Have Landed marks the end of a significant chapter in the career of one of the most acclaimed and widely read scientists of our time. Gould writes about the themes that have defined his career, which his readers have come to expect and celebrate, casting new light upon them and conveying the ideas that science professionals exchange among themselves (minus the technical jargon). Here, of course, is Charles Darwin, from his centrality to any sound scientific education to little-known facts about his life. Gould touches on subjects as far-reaching and disparate as feathered dinosaurs, the scourge of syphilis and the frustration of the man who identified it, and Freud's "evolutionary fantasy." He writes brilliantly of Nabokov's delicately crafted drawings of butterflies and the true meaning of biological diversity. And in the poignant title essay, he details his grandfather's journey from Hungary to America, where he arrived on September 11, 1901. It is from his grandfather's journal entry of that day, stating simply "I have landed, " that the book's title was drawn. This landing occurred 100 years to the day before our greatest recent tragedy, also explored, but with optimism, in the concluding section of the book. Presented in eight parts, I Have Landed begins with a remembrance of a moment of wonder from childhood. In Part II, Gould explains that humanistic disciplines are not antithetical to theoretical or applied sciences. Rather, they often share a commonality of method and motivation, with great potential to enhance the achievements of each other, an assertion perfectly supported by essays on such notables as Nabokov and Frederic Church. Part III contains what no Gould collection would be complete without: his always compelling "mini intellectual biographies, " which render each subject and his work deserving of reevaluation and renewed significance. In this collection of figures compelling and strange, Gould exercises one of his greatest strengths, the ability to reveal a significant scientific concept through a finely crafted and sympathetic portrait of the person behind the science. Turning his pen to three key figures--Sigmund Freud, Isabelle Duncan, and E. Ray Lankester, the latter an unlikely attendee of the funeral of Karl Marx--he highlights the effect of the Darwinian revolution and its resonance on their lives and work. Part IV encourages the reader--through what Gould calls "intellectual paleontology"--to consider scientific theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a new light and to recognize the limitations our own place in history may impose on our understanding of those ideas. Part V explores the op-ed genre and includes two essays with differing linguistic formats, which address the continual tug-of-war between the study of evolution and creationism. In subsequent essays, in true Gould fashion, we are treated to moments of good humor, especially when he leads us to topics that bring him obvious delight, such as Dorothy Sayers novels and his enduring love of baseball and all its dramas. There is an ardent admiration of the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan (wonderfully demonstrated in the jacket illustration), who are not above inclusion in all things evolutionary. This is truly Gould's most personal work to date. How fitting that this final collection should be his most revealing and, in content, the one that reflects most clearly the complexity, breadth of knowledge, and optimism that characterize Gould himself. I Have Landed succeeds in reinforcing Gould's underlying and constant theme from the series' commencement thirty years ago--the study of our own scientific, intellectual, and emotional evolution--bringing reader and author alike to what can only be described as a brilliantly written and very natural conclusion. "From the Hardcover edition.".
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Gould's final essay collection is based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine-exactly 300 consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific discovery and the most personal book he ever published.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Machine generated contents note: I. ART AND SCIENCE
• 1. Upwardly Mobile Fossils of Leonardo's Living Earth
• 2. Great Western and the Fighting Temeraire
• 3. Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly
• II. BIOGRAPHIES IN EVOLUTION
• 4. Clam Stripped Bare by Her Naturalists, Even
• 5. Darwin's American Soulmate: A Bird's-Eye View
• 6. Seahorse for All Races
• 7. Mr. Sophia's Pony
• III. HUMAN PREHISTORY
• 8. Up Against a Wall
• 9. Lesson from the Old Masters
• 10. Our Unusual Unity
• IV. OF HISTORY AND TOLERATION
• 11. Cerion for Christopher
• 12. Dodo in the Caucus Race
• 13. Diet of Worms and the Defenestration of Prague
• V. EVOLUTIONARY FACTS AND THEORIES
• 14. Non-Overlapping Magisteria
• 15. Boyle's Law and Darwin's Details
• 16. Tallest Tale
• 17. Brotherhood by Inversion (or, As the Worm Turns)
• VI. DIFFERENT PERCEPTIONS OF COMMON TRUTHS
• 18. War of the Worldviews
• 19. Triumph of the Root-Heads
• 20. Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?
• 21. Reversing Established Orders.

With his customary brilliance, Gould examines the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that build nature's and humanity's diversity and order.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In his latest collection of essays, bestselling scientist Stephen Jay Gould once again offers his unmistakable perspective on natural history and the people who have tried to make sense of it. Gould is planning to bring down the curtain on his nearly thirty-year stint as a monthly essayist for "Natural History" magazine, the longest-running series of scientific essays in history. This, then, is the next-to-last essay collection from one of the most acclaimed and widely read scientists of our time. In this work of twenty-three essays, selected by "Booklist" as one of the top ten science and technology books of 2000, Gould covers topics as diverse as episodes in the birth of paleontology to lessons from Britain's four greatest Victorian naturalists. The Lying Stones of Marrakech presents the richness and fascination of the various lives that have fueled the enterprise of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Gould covers topics as diverse as episodes in the birth of paleontology to lessons from Britain's four greatest Victorian naturalists. This collection presents the richness and fascination of the various lives that have fueled the enterprise of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Gould covers topics as diverse as episodes in the birth of paleontology to lessons from Britain's four greatest Victorian naturalists. This collection presents the richness and fascination of the various lives that have fueled the enterprise of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In this new edition of Questioning the Millennium, best-selling author Stephen Jay Gould applies his wit and erudition to one of today's most pressing subjects: the significance of the millennium. In 1950 at age eight, prompted by an issue of Life magazine marking the century's midpoint, Stephen Jay Gould started thinking about the approaching turn of the millennium. In this beautiful inquiry into time and its milestones, he shares his interest and insights with his readers. Refreshingly reasoned and absorbing, the book asks and answers the three major questions that define the approaching calendrical event. First, what exactly is this concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted? How did the name for a future thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth get transferred to the passage of a secular period of a thousand years in current human history? When does the new millennium really begin: January 1, 2000, or January 1, 2001? (Although seemingly trivial, the debate over this issue tells an intriguing story about the cultural history of the twentieth century.) And why must our calendars be so complex, leading to our search for arbitrary regularity, including a fascination with millennia? This revised edition begins with a new and extensive preface on a key subject not treated in the original version. As always, Gould brings into his essays a wide range of compelling historical and scientific fact, including a brief history of millennial fevers, calendrical traditions, and idiosyncrasies from around the world; the story of a sixth-century monk whose errors in chronology plague us even today; and the heroism of a young autistic man who has developed the extraordinary ability to calculate dates deep into the past and the future. Ranging over a wide terrain of phenomena--from the arbitrary regularities of human calendars to the unpredictability of nature, from the vagaries of pop culture to the birth of Christ--Stephen Jay Gould holds up the mirror to our millennial passions to reveal our foibles, absurdities, and uniqueness--in other words, our humanity. "From the Hardcover edition.".
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• * Introduction *1. What Every Paleontologist Knows
• * An Introductory Example * Testimonials to Common Knowledge * Darwinian Solutions and Paradoxes * The Paradox of Insulation from Disproof * The Paradox of Stymied Practice
• *2. The Primary Claims of Punctuated Equilibrium
• * Data and Definitions * Microevolutionary Links * Macroevolutionary Implications * Tempo and the Significance of Stasis * Mode and the Speciational Foundation of Macroevolution
• *3. The Scientific Debate on Punctuated Equilibrium: Critiques and Responses
• * Critiques Based on the Definability of Paleontological Species * Empirical Affirmation * Reasons for a Potential Systematic Underestimation of Biospecies by Paleospecies * Reasons for a Potential Systematic Overestimation of Biospecies by Paleospecies * Reasons Why an Observed Punctuational Pattern Might Not Represent Speciation * Critiques Based on Denying Events of Speciation as the Primary Locus of Change * Critiques Based on Supposed Failures of Empirical Results to Affirm Predictions of Punctuated Equilibrium * Claims for Empirical Refutation by Cases * Phenotypes * Genotypes * Empirical Tests of Conformity with Models
• *4. Sources of Data for Testing Punctuated Equilibrium
• * Preamble * The Equilibrium in Punctuated Equilibrium: Quantitatively Documented Patterns of Stasis in Unbranched Segments of Lineages * The Punctuations of Punctuated Equilibrium: Tempo and Mode in the Origin of Paleospecies * The Inference of Cladogenesis by the Criterion of Ancestral Survival * The "Dissection" of Punctuations to Infer Both Existence and Modality * Time * Geography * Morphometric Mode * Proper and Adequate Tests of Relative Frequencies: The Strong Empirical Validation of Punctuated Equilibrium * The Indispensability of Data on Relative Frequencies * Relative Frequencies for Higher Taxa in Entire Biotas * Relative Frequencies for Entire Clades * Causal Clues from Differential Patterns of Relative Frequencies
• *5. The Broader Implications of Punctuated Equilibrium for Evolutionary Theory and General Notions of Change
• * What Changes May Punctuated Equilibrium Instigate in Our Views about Evolutionary Mechanisms and the History of Life? * The Explanation and Broader Meaning of Stasis * Frequency * Generality * Causality * Punctuation, the Origin of New Macroevolutionary Individuals, and Resulting Implications for Evolutionary Theory * Trends * The Speciational Reformulation of Macroevolution * Ecological and Higher-Level Extensions * Punctuation All the Way Up and Down? The Generalization and Broader Utility of Punctuated Equilibrium (in More Than a Metaphorical Sense) at Other Levels of Evolution, and for Other Disciplines In and Outside the Natural Sciences * General Models for Punctuated Equilibrium * Punctuational Change at Other Levels and Scales of Evolution * A Preliminary Note on Homology and Analogy in the Conceptual Realm * Punctuation Below the Species Level * Punctuation Above the Species Level * Punctuational Models in Other Disciplines: Towards a General Theory of Change * Principles for a Choice of Examples * Examples from the History of Human Artifacts and Cultures * Examples from Human Institutions and Theories about the Natural World * Two Concluding Examples, a General Statement, and a Coda
• * Appendix: A Largely Sociological (and Fully Partisan) History of the Impact and Critique of Punctuated Equilibrium
• * The Entrance of Punctuated Equilibrium into Common Language and General Culture * An Episodic History of Punctuated Equilibrium * Early Stages and Future Contexts * Creationist Misappropriation of Punctuated Equilibrium * Punctuated Equilibrium in Journalism and Textbooks * The Personal Aspect of Professional Reaction * The Case Ad Hominem against Punctuated Equilibrium * An Interlude on Sources of Error * The Wages of Jealousy * The Descent to Nastiness * The Most Unkindest Cut of All * The Wisdom of Agassiz's and von Baer's Threefold History of Scientific Ideas * A Coda on the Kindness and Generosity of Most Colleagues
• * Notes * Bibliography * Illustration Credits * Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould took the scientific world by storm with his paper on punctuated equilibrium, written with Niles Eldredge. Challenging a core assumption of Darwin's theory of evolution, it launched the career of one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of our time--perhaps the best known since Darwin. Now, thirty-five years later, and five years after his untimely death, Punctuated Equilibrium (originally published as the central chapter of Gould's masterwork, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory) offers his only book-length testament on an idea he fiercely promoted, repeatedly refined, and tirelessly defended. Punctuated equilibrium holds that the great majority of species originate in geological moments (punctuations) and persist in stasis. The idea was hotly debated because it forced biologists to rethink entrenched ideas about evolutionary patterns and processes. But as Gould shows here in his typically exhaustive coverage, the idea has become the foundation of a new view of hierarchical selection and macroevolution. What emerges strikingly from this book is that punctuated equilibrium represents a much broader paradigm about the nature of change--a worldview that may be judged as a distinctive and important movement within recent intellectual history. Indeed we may now be living within a punctuation, and our awareness of what this means may be the enduring legacy of one of America's best-loved scientists.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

There aren't many scientists famous enough in their lifetime to be canonized by the US Congress as one of America's 'living legends'. It is still more unlikely that the title should have been conferred on a man regarded by many in the US as a notorious radical and sometime Marxist - controversial throughout his life as a theorist and polemicist even amongst colleagues in his own chosen fields of palaeontology and evolutionary theory. Yet few would have grudged this accolade to Stephen Jay Gould, whose writings on history - both of the natural world and of the study of that natural world - had made him a household name by the time of his death in 2002. And not just in the Anglophone world, for his books and articles have been widely translated and read in their hundreds of thousands in every society in which debate about evolution and the human condition are the stuff of intellectual life. Gould's written legacy is prodigious - the unbroken series of 300 essays published in "Natural History" magazine, a clutch of books culminating in the monumental 1400 page "Structure of Evolutionary Theory", appearing just months before his death, and of course his academic papers. A committed Darwinian and robust critic of creationist myths, he nevertheless made major revisions to orthodox Darwinian theory, from his concept of punctuated equilibrium to his insistence on the importance of chance in the history of life on earth. And in addition, his trenchant attacks on scientific racism and the pretensions of sociobiology still resonate, nearly three decades after they were first written. In the "Stephen Jay Gould Reader", Steven Rose and Paul McGarr have selected from across the full range of Gould's writing, including some of the most famous of his essays and extracts from his major books. An introduction by Steven Rose sets both the essays, and Gould's life, in context.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)