Life's Grandeur or Considering the Full House
A Review of Stephen Jay Gould, Life's Grandeur, the Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin.
Stephen Jay Gould does an excellent job again, this time a very thorough introduction into statistical analysis with regard to natural systems and baseball. One must pay attention when reading Gould, but otherwise he gives insight to the world of science, particularly Palaeontology and Evolutionary Biology.
Don't be put off by the Baseball introduction, it's his way of explaining some facts about systems that reveal themselves when considering the statistics and why our tendency to use averages and means to describe something often gives a distorted picture of the whole system that can give a false trend. The whole system, by the way, is the "Full House".
Being pattern recognition creatures, we can identify trends early on and can act to avoid disaster or take advantage for profit quite frequently, but we also see trends where none exist by looking at limited data, or from a skewed viewpoint. Gould initially explains this with his baseball example which he sufficiently covers so someone like me can understand it, (I live in Australia and culturally more likely to understand Cricket than some North American game).
The issue he uses with Baseball is the 0.400 average hit rates for the batter. A rate that's frequency has dropped considerably over the last 50 years. Using the batting averages for all the players, with the exception of those that only batted once or twice a series, a curve is drawn. Then a statistical analysis is conducted of the resulting curve, called a Bell curve. The right tail is the part of the curve we are interested in, that is where the 0.400 hist rate resides. Summing all the seasons up, and graphed over each year, a trend is shown where the curve tends to move to the right and the differences between the poor hitters and mostest hitter is reduced.
Then we begin to see the "Full House", the skill of all the players has had an effect on keeping the better batters from achieving the 0.400 or right wall of Baseball fame. The whole game has improved, the variation of the hit rate has reduced, and a further analysis of the bowlers and other players does in fact show the same facts.
Therefore, anyone saying that batting has dropped in performance is only looking at the right tail, not the whole curve of performance of batters, or the statistics for the whole game, every player.
We then move onto an analysis of the left wall case of similar cases in nature in relation to the belief that nature is in constant progression from simple to complex organisms so Man was inevitable, at the top of the tree. His analysis with ample data of various clades and phylum like the ubiquitous horse and its progenitors to small aquatic shell creatures, the variations of the creatures do not indicate anything of progress except a random difference or variation that indicates a skewed bell curve with a right tale of a small level of complex creatures.
Demonstrating the variation of a total random series of events of a drunk moving from the left wall to the gutter across a foot path, a apparently constant demonstration of how, given enough time, the right side will be reached. The same with the development and variation of creatures over time from a left wall of single cell simple creatures to the right wall of most complexity, the samples appear to be of the same order of randomness.
Thus, if we rewind the tape of life, the right tail will occur but at a random time and a random variation, so Man would not appear again, or even his sized brain. It certainly puts us in a minor position in nature with this well argued discussion of the analysis of data.
It will be interesting to see how the creation of the world fits in with science and religion in the future. Perhaps Our Heavenly Father stepped in at the stage that Man, just before agriculture started or maybe sometime during this period and then taught Man within the Garden of Eden to establish the first righteous prophet, Adam. Who knows at this stage of civilisation, maybe sometime soon a prophet will be able to find how the two ideas from the scriptures and science can work together?

A Review of Stephen Jay Gould's, Life's Grandeur, the Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin.

Stephen Jay Gould does an excellent job again, this time a very thorough introduction into statistical analysis with regard to natural systems and baseball. One must pay attention when reading Gould, but otherwise he gives insight to the world of science, particularly Palaeontology and Evolutionary Biology.

Don't be put off by the Baseball introduction, it's his way of explaining some facts about systems that reveal themselves when considering the statistics and why our tendency to use averages and means to describe something often gives a distorted picture of the whole system that can give a false trend. The whole system, by the way, is the "Full House".

Being pattern recognition creatures, we can identify trends early on and can act to avoid disaster or take advantage for profit quite frequently, but we also see trends where none exist by looking at limited data, or from a skewed viewpoint. Gould initially explains this with his baseball example which he sufficiently covers so someone like me can understand it, (I live in Australia and culturally more likely to understand Cricket than some North American game).

The issue he uses with Baseball is the 0.400 average hit rates for the batter. A rate that's frequency has dropped considerably over the last 50 years. Using the batting averages for all the players, with the exception of those that only batted once or twice a series, a curve is drawn. Then a statistical analysis is conducted of the resulting curve, called a Bell curve. The right tail is the part of the curve we are interested in, that is where the 0.400 hist rate resides. Summing all the seasons up, and graphed over each year, a trend is shown where the curve tends to move to the right and the differences between the poor hitters and mostest hitter is reduced.

Then we begin to see the "Full House", the skill of all the players has had an effect on keeping the better batters from achieving the 0.400 or right wall of Baseball fame. The whole game has improved, the variation of the hit rate has reduced, and a further analysis of the bowlers and other players does in fact show the same facts.

Therefore, anyone saying that batting has dropped in performance is only looking at the right tail, not the whole curve of performance of batters, or the statistics for the whole game, every player.

We then move onto an analysis of the left wall case of similar cases in nature in relation to the belief that nature is in constant progression from simple to complex organisms so Man was inevitable, at the top of the tree. His analysis with ample data of various clades and phylum like the ubiquitous horse and its progenitors to small aquatic shell creatures, the variations of the creatures do not indicate anything of progress except a random difference or variation that indicates a skewed bell curve with a right tale of a small level of complex creatures.

Demonstrating the variation of a total random series of events of a drunk moving from the left wall to the gutter across a foot path, a apparently constant demonstration of how, given enough time, the right side will be reached. The same with the development and variation of creatures over time from a left wall of single cell simple creatures to the right wall of most complexity, the samples appear to be of the same order of randomness.

Thus, if we rewind the tape of life, the right tail will occur but at a random time and a random variation, so Man would not appear again, or even his sized brain. It certainly puts us in a minor position in nature with this well argued discussion of the analysis of data.

It will be interesting to see how the creation of the world fits in with science and religion in the future. Perhaps Our Heavenly Father stepped in at the stage that Man, just before agriculture started or maybe sometime during this period and then taught Man within the Garden of Eden to establish the first righteous prophet, Adam. Who knows at this stage of civilisation, maybe sometime soon a prophet will be able to find how the two ideas from the scriptures and science can work together?

This volume is a handy collection of three of the most important books he wrote for general consumption. The translation is clear, and the 19th/early 20th century flavor of the writing comes through without sounding archaic.

Some historical figures are known to all cultured persons. Leo
Tolstoy, Johannes Brahms, Vincent Van Gogh -- these are names of
which most of us would be embarrassed to be ignorant. On the
other hand, few of us would think to add the name of Jules Henri
Poincare to this list; and yet, if we did, it would tower over
all the rest. For Poincare was a mathematician of the very
highest rank, an astonishingly fertile creative genius whose
prescient insight and technical mastery utterly transformed the
art to which he devoted his life. Among his predecessors in the
three-thousand-year history of mathematics, only Archimedes,
Newton, Euler, and Gauss can be said to have equalled or
exceeded him. By any standard, Poincare was one of the truly
great.

If for no other reason than this, THE VALUE OF SCIENCE is well
worth reading. It is, after all, quite rare to find a book that
collects the thoughts of one of the very few genuinely profound
intellects in human history. But what makes THE VALUE OF
SCIENCE truly wonderful is that it is not merely worth reading:
it is, in fact, a joy to read. For in addition to his uncanny
mathematical gifts, Poincare had the knack of expressing
himself beautifully in writing. Even in translation, his prose
has an admirable lucidity and grace, and his aphoristic style
often makes him highly quotable. When he speaks of mathematical
creation, as he does in a celebrated essay of that name, he
offers general readers a fascinating glimpse into the depths
of his own extraordinary mind at the peak of its imaginative
frenzy; his (scrupulously non-technical) account of one of his
greatest mathematical discoveries supplies an unforgettable
intellectual thrill, a sort of electric shock for the soul. For
anyone interested in the psychology of creation, this is simply
irresistible stuff.

A final brief caveat: although Poincare was clearly the greatest
mathematician of his time, he was not the greatest physicist. A
curious wrong-headedness kept him from beating Albert Einstein
to the creation of special relativity, and general relativity
eventually proved Poincare wrong in some of his opinions on the
relation between physics and geometry. So when Poincare speaks
of physics, bear in mind that some of his positions no longer
seem really tenable.

But this is no reason not to read every word of THE VALUE OF
SCIENCE. It's a marvelous book, and its author was a marvelous
man. Get to know them both. You'll be glad you did.

Those of us who love pouring through ancient journals- especially British journals, with their exceedingly polite and ultimately trivial harsplitting over pointless detail have a treasure in this book. The editor has taken and annotated gems from nearly 100 years of publication of this eminant journal, including some very amusing and ultimately pointless debates between a number of eminant Victorians. There are some useful inquiries as well; Francis Galton, having his portrait painted for the umpteenth time, begins a study of the number of brushstrokes used my the artist, and eventually concludes that the number of strokes in a given portrait seems to be consistent between artists and independant of style. Various writers suggest mneumonics for memorizing the significant digits of pi- in various langauges, and various meters.

On the more serious side, there is much discussion of the treatment of war wounds at the time of the Great War, quite a lot of debate about Prof! . Einstein, and some of Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman's first published writings in England- regarding the physics of musical instruments.

If this sort of thing interests you (and it absolutely captivates me) you should rush to buy this book lest as soon as possible lest it fall out of print.

If you're interested in biological evolution, this is a book you've got to have. A huge collection of articles, arranged alphabetically, but each one interesting in itself. And many are fascinating. It's written for common folks, like me, but few compromises are made with scientific precision. Of special interest to many will be the biographical sketches (of "losers" like Lysenko as well as "winners" up to an including both Charles and Erasmus Darwin). Also covers a lot of frauds and hoaxes (e.g., Piltdown Man). You'll have fun. And even professional evolutionary biologists can expect to learn a lot.

Stephen Jay Gould is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University, as well as the Curator for Invertebrate Paleontology in the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His witty, informative, and insightful essays on evolution are aptly narrated by Jeff Riggenbach in this two cassette audiobook formate. The essays featured include The Wheel of Fortune and the Wedge of Progress; Tires to Sandals; The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change; Natural Selection and the Human Brain; The Declining Empire of Apes; Grimm's Greatest Tale; and Our Allotted Lifetimes. Highly recommended for students and non-specialists alike who have an interest in the various issues and topics arising from the science and development of evolution theories and findings!

Intended for the general reader, this well illustrated book is an atlas of the Earth from the Archean to the present. Geological concepts are explained well, and are tied together with the paleontology of various periods.

This book will give you new and great pictures and ideas. I think that it is cool.

For the longest time, humans did not understand reproduction. Maybe they still don't. According to archeomythologists like Marija Gimbutas (THE GODDESS) humans first believed they came into existence spontaneously from the Goddess. After all, they could empirically detect that babies came from female bodies so why shouldn't a great big female goddess be the source of all life. With the arrival of Indo-Europeans in old Europe came the belief that the source of life was God the Father. After all, didn't the Bible say God made Adam and Eve and later on planted the baby Jesus in Mary? Her womb was merely a vessal to carry him (Zeus!! if she had been his real mother he would have been at least half human).

The second millenium of the Common Era produced a new twist on an old way of thinking. Renaissance men, being devoutly religious, still believed the source of all life was male, but now they sought to demonstrate this "truth" scientifically.

The "father of insemination" Spallanzani, demonstrated with frogs that male sperm was a requisite for the production of progeny. Correia tells of Spallanzani and his research in her amusing chapter "Frogs with boxershorts." But the Italians weren't the only scientists interested in sperm. Dutch scientists like Nicholas Hartsoeker (the heart searcher with the microscope), Antoni van Leeuwenhock, and Swammerdam fiddled with fleas and tulips and "advanced" the theory of spermism--that preformed little characters (homunculi) were planted in females (think penises) and then grew into babies. The female was still merely the vessal for rearing these perfectly formed progeny (think kangaroo pouch).

Dr. Clara Pinto Correia, professor of developmental biology says the theory of preformation was still being discussed in the 19th Century. Although the jacket of THE OVARY OF EVE insists men and women were engaged in the study of preformation, the truth according to Correia is that this was a male-insprired activity largely driven by the belief that males were the source of life.

Preformation was a wrong turn down a dead-end street. Usually historians tell us the story of scientific sucessesses, but what makes this book so interesting is that Correia tells us the amusing and heart-breaking story of the losers. And, these losers were a pretty impressive bunch of guys. Many of them were geniuses we know for other reasons, who were failures on spermism/preformation front, but sucessful elsewhere. This is a fascinating, readable and wonderful story that involves demons, dragons and Dracula. I recommend THE OVARY OF EVE to anyone who loves science and a good mystery.

I read this book for a class I took - a class in Anthropology. It created in me a new form of respect for our not so distant cousins - the chimpanzees. Jane Goodall is an amazing woman who in my eyes defied tradition - having gone into this study without a real education in it, she put her heart and her soul into the study of Chimpanzees in the Gombe. It in fact became her life. Her love for nature is evident throughout this book - she even nicknamed her son 'Grub' - I believe he has another name, but with all due respect I like the name 'Grub' a lot. This book shows how after watching the chimpanzees, Goodall learned how to be a mother. The similarities between these cousins of ours and us is truely amazing. For me this shed new light on the theory of evolution, and even some that didn't believe in evolution began to question it after they read Goodal's book. I quite enjoyed reading 'In the Shadow of Man' and intend on reading more of her works.

This book is truly insightful, as is all books by Dr Goodall. But what is truly great about this book is the insight into human society and how it may have been formed.

This book needs to be read by mothers-to-be because it will truly give you insight as to what may truly be the right and wrong ways to raise a child. The chimpanzees that Dr Goodall studies reveal mothering practices that can be seen in human society. However, the truly great thing about this is that it also shows how the baby chimpanzees grew up and which ones where more likely to survive and what their personalities are like as adults.

This book is also great for those who are of scientific mind and want to know more about behavior and its evolution.

Overall this book is a must read for EVERYONE!!

Jane Goodall is a unique undividual whose work should be studied by those who think that the animal rights people don't have a clue. Her efforts at gaining the trust of chimpanzee's in their natural habitat have spauned a host of up-and-comers who will continue to carry her work to the next level.

Goodall distinguished herself by sitting in the bush on a daily basis until the local chimpanzee tribal members came close enough to make physical contact with her. That an English woman scientist would journey to Tanzania to engage in this type of research is unusual and certainly puts her at "the top of her class".

She follows the lives and behavior patterns of her subjects until her research sounds like a Michener novel with its generational emphasis and timelines of family heritage. Within this effort she follows each subsequent offspring through each of their successive cycles from birth and death.

What is fascinating is how she describes personality differences, the kind that come from hard-coded genetic diffences, the same as we find in human individuals. The mating behavior sounds like something out of "Cosmopolitan". The squabbles and fighting behavior could be that of any large Homo Sapien family. While Chimp's aren't on the same intellectual level as humans they certainly come closer than any other species. Jane Goodall deserves every accolade she gets for bringing us a lens through which to observe another geneological line of a species that has developed from our common ancestors.

Her work suggests that we should rethink our medical research toward more humane treatment of these animals whose behavior is too similar to ours to ignore. This is an excellent book.

I just got through reading this book the other day and I must say that is was a great book for both the layman and the seasoned veteran of evolutionary study (I myself have quite a decent amount of knowledge on the subject). It was easy to read and had plenty of illustrations. Definitely one of the best in recent years.

Evolution certainly is a triumph of science, but any good idea has the potential for controversy. Such is Darwin's theory, which still draws harsh criticism even after about a century and a half since its formulation. It just doesn't sit well with many people. For example, the reviewer from Boston (Dec. 7, I believe) that only gave this book one star points out a recent Gallup poll where only a small percentage of people believed in evolution as a totally naturalistic process. What he didn't point out is that a likewise small percentage had a "good understanding" of the theory. So it seems that the majority of the people in the poll have no reason to make a judgement in the matter. Also, the motivations and methods of creationism/ID are totally pseudoscientific.

In any case, one thing can always be said as being true of science: You can't vote on the truth. No matter how unpopular a theory is (with either the public or even the scientific community), if the evidence says what something is, then it is that. And since the evidence points that evolution is true, then evolution is true. It is a totally naturalistic process that doesn't require divine intervention. Besides, all the people who gave this book a bad review for their ideological concepts must have not read the last chapter. It appears that their negative views of Darwin's grand masterpiece are not even close to unanimous with other religious people (even the Pope, who always warns about confusing science and religion, says there is no conflict with evolution and Christianity). But like I said, it doesn't matter what the Darwin bashers say--evolution is fact.

I suggest reading Michael Shermer's recent article on evolution vs. creationism in Scientific American magazine . [...]

I first checked Zimmer's book out of the library and now I need to buy a copy. It is an excellent presentation of the history of evolutionary thought that is easily read and understood by almost anyone. I realize that many creationist will be put off and spend some time pointing out supposed "flaws" in the book and evolutionary theory generally. However, despite their difficulties and the lamentable inability of many Americans to take evolution and the concepts of deep time seriously, the idea has triumphed within the science of biology (and in much of the non-American world.) No amount of attempted suppression or "equal time" demands will change that and such attempts only make the proponents of "intelligent design" look foolish. It is possible that they will win out politically for a while, but so did Lysenko in the former Soviet Union until his ideas about "vernalization," among others, were later shown to be totally false. There was a huge cost to agriculture in the USSR because of Lysenko's ideas and we would face a similar cost in molecular biology, medicine, geology and similar fields if the creationists should "win," based on the weak "evidence" they currently present.

If the "intelligent design" proponents want to discount biochemical, geological, anatomical, and even astronomical evidence, or discredit evolution by bringing up already discarded ideas and hoaxes (like Piltdown Man) as straw men, they are free to do so, but such perversity does not validate their argument.

This is not to say that evolutionary theory is static or should be free from criticism- far from it! New ideas within the evolutionary framework are being proposed all the time. Gould and Eldredge some years ago brought up the punctuated equilibrium idea, expanding it somewhat on similar ideas of Mayr. More recently Margulis has proposed a symbiotic evolutionary mechanism. There is an ongoing argument over evolutionary psychology (well reviewed by Zimmer in this book!) and more and more discoveries in the areas of molecular biology, behavior, paleontology, geology, ecology and systematics are constantly altering and changing the landscape of evolutionary theory.

This is in fact what distinguishes science from pseudo-science like "creationism" or "intelligent design." It is, despite individual scientist's egos and definite human flaws, a self-correcting system. If true empirical evidence for "intelligent design" should appear, eventually the scientific community would (perhaps after some time) accept it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for creationists, even in their new guise as practitioners of "intelligent design" theory. Science cannot deal with the supernatural explanations of the creationists, which are based on faith, because science has to be dedicated to the material world in order to function. Zimmer demonstrates these problems pretty graphically and I applaud for this magnificent effort!

I recommend this book highly to anyone with an open mind.

Evolution the Triumph of an Idea is a superbly written synthesis of the theory of evolution and its history. The author, Carl Zimmer, is a science journalist rather than a professional anthropologist, geologist or historian, which means that the book is eminently readable. It is also well researched with an extensive bibliography for each chapter. While it is clearly enough framed for the average reader without a background in the subject, it also presents enough new information to keep the serious student of the topic interested as well.

Although the volume was intended to accompany a PBS series on evolution, it would make an excellent source text for a high school or college survey course on the subject, as it covers the theory, the data supporting it, the newer thoughts on human evolution, the issues of ecology and conservation, and the character of science. It even touches upon the issue of God and science.

As an overview, Part 1 covers the autobiographical history of Darwin and the metamorphosis of his theory and the intellectual and emotional environment into which it was introduced. Part 2 introduces the actual theory and how the web of life has come to exist as it does. It also discusses the impact of human activity on the natural world and what the likely outcome will be if we persist in pursuing our present behavior with respect to the environment. Part 3 describes the coevolution of species and its impacts on relationships such as those in agriculture: natural plants, bioengineered plants, and insect and microbial pests. It also discusses the probable origin of some of the human diseases, the use and abuse of antibiotics, and the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs and AIDES. Part 4 contains some of the most pertinent information in that it points out the risks of dropping the subject of evolution from the core curricula of the nation's high schools.

In his defense of evolution, Zimmer points out that it is not simply a theory of biology that is at stake, but the scientific method itself. Some of my favorite quotes from Part 4 are: 1) "The scientific method does not claim that events can have only natural causes but that the only causes that we can understand scientifically are natural ones. As powerful as the scientific method may be, it must be mute about things beyond its scope. Supernatural forces are, by definition, above the laws of nature, and thus beyond the scope of science (p. 332)." And 2) "When microbiologists study an outbreak of resistant tuberculosis, they do not research the possibility that it is an act of God. When astrophysicists try to figure out the sequence of events by which a primordial cloud condensed into our solar system, they do not simply draw a big box between the hazy cloud and the well-formed planets and write inside it, 'Here a miracle happened.' When meteorologists fail to predict the path of a hurricane, they do not claim that God's will pushed it off course (p. 333)." And finally 3) "Science cannot simply cede the unknown in nature to the divine. If it did, there would be no science at all. As University of Chicago geneticist Jerry Coyne puts it, 'If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance 'God''(p. 333)."

As we get closer and closer to bringing about a total collapse of the environment of which we are an integral part, it behooves us to come to a clearer understanding of how our biosphere came to exist, how the various parts of it interrelate, and how our tinkering with it can have disastrous consequences. The teaching and learning of evolutionary theory is an important part of that understanding. This book helps further that goal.