What a book..."The Book of life." Why it's a modern cartoon book of paleontology. Though its wonderful life-like illustrations and tree-of-life charts are delivered as scientific facts, they are simply graphic theories that illustrators doll up into hypothetical reality. If you like science and fiction, here is a book for you. The realistic pictures belie the text, which says: "We do not even know how to conceptualize, much less to draw the worldview that would place Homo sapiens into proper relationship with the history of life."

Its authors caveat is that "science can only operate as a work in progress without perfect knowledge, and we much therefore leave a great deal out from ignorance --- especially in a historical field like paleontology, where we must work with the strictly limited evidence of a very imperfect fossil record." It's that fossil record, that the book presumes is accurate in its layer-by-layer record through time, that requires scrutiny. The oldest fossils are found in the bottom layers and the youngest in the top layers of rock, but little or no evidence is presented to provide skeptical readers information they can decipher for themselves as to the accuracy of fossil dating by rock layers. Are we to believe, without exception, that the fossil record is progressive from bottom to top? What about fossilized trees that protrude through millions of years of time? They are conveniently omitted. Michael Benton of England's Bristol University, one of the book's contributors, says "All the periods in the geological time scale receive their names in recognition of obvious changes in the fossil record." Yet, to the contrary, Benton adds, "the history of Earth's crust has been far too violent to preserve much more than a random sample."

Its general editor, Stephen Jay Gould, is magnanimous in his promotion of a single theory of man's origins, from monkeys he and most other fossil hunters say.

There may be missing pieces to the paleontological puzzle, but the bone diggers cliam they have finally filled in the evolutional blanks and can conclusively attest to the idea that life evolved from simpler single-celled organisms into modern man. The book's most ardent opponents are taken head on by Gould: "The lack of fossil intermediates had often been cited by creationists as a supposedly prime example for their contention that intermediate forms not only haven't been found in the fossil record but can even be conceived." But Gould holds a trump card. He says: "a lovely series of intermediary steps have now been found in rocks.... in Pakistan. This elegant series, giving lie to the creationist claims, includes the almost perfectly intermediate Ambulocetus (literally, the walking whale), a form with substantial rear legs to complement the front legs already known from many fossil whales, and clearly well adapted both for swimming and for adequate, if limited, movement on land." Oddly, the book never shows a drawing of Ambulocetus, but does have an illustration of a skeleton of a 400-million year old fish with a small underside fin bone the authors claim "must have evolved" into legs in four-legged animals. Man's imagination is not found wanting here. Out of millions of fossils collected and stored in museums, is Ambulocetus the main piece of evidence for evolutionary theory?

Richard Benton says that Charles Darwin had hoped the fossil record would eventually confirm his theory of evolution, but "this has not happened," says Benton. Darwin hoped newly-discovered fossils would connect the dots into a clear evolutionary pattern. The book attempts to do that with its fictional drawings of apes evolving into pre-humans (hominids) and then modern man. Yet the book is not without contradictions. It says: "It remains uncertain whether chimpanzees are more closely related to modern humans or to the gorilla."

The horse is shown as evolving from a small, four-toed to a large one-toed animal over millions of years. There are different varieties of horses, yet there is no evidence that a horse ever evolved from another lower form of animal, nor that horses evolved into any other form of animal.

Another evolutionary puzzle that goes unexplained in the book is the pollination of flowers. How did bees and flowers arrive simultaneously in nature? What directed the appearance of one separate kingdom of life (insects) with that of another?

The book describes 6 1/2-foot millipedes and dragonflies with the wing span of a seagull, but gives no explanation for them. Life was unusual in the past and not all forms fit evolutionary patterns. Consider the popular supposition that life evolved from the sea onto land. That would make more advanced forms of intelligence land bearing. But the aquatic dolphins defy that model, since they are among the smartest mammals.

The book maintains an "out of Africa" scenario for the geographical origins of man, but recent fossil finds in Australia challenge that theory and even the book's authors admit that "a single new skull in an unexpected time or place could still rewrite the primate story." Consider Java man (Homo erectus), once considered the "missing link" and dated at 1.8 million years old. Modern dating methods now estimate Java man to be no more than 50,000 years of age, a fact that was omitted from this text.

Creativity, invention and language are brought out as unique human characteristics. Yet the true uniqueness of man is not emphasized. Humans biologically stand apart from animals in so many ways. Humans can be tickled whereas animals cannot. Humans shed emotional tears, animals do not. The book does not dare venture beyond structure and function, beyond cells and DNA, to ask the question posed by philosophers --- does man have a soul? The Bible speaks of a soul 533 times, this "book of life," not once.

Gould's temple is science. He calls the scientific method "that infallible guide to empirical truth." Science works by elimination. It can only work from experiment to experiment, eliminating what is not true. It can say what is probable, it can never say what is true. Gould appears to begrudge the shackles of science by stepping outside its boundaries in overstating what it can accomplish. Whereas creationists await the day they will stand in judgment before God, for the evolutionists Gould says "Someday, perhaps, we shall me our ancestors face to face." Imagine, standing there looking at a man-like monkey skeleton.

One cannot fault the flaws in this book. After all, it was written by highly evolved apes.

You would have expected more time and detail to the ermergence of the nervous system and the Cambrian Explosion. A more up-to-date section on human evolution (no mention of Ardipithecus Ramidus) but on the whole the book is a good synthesis of the state of the knowledge in this field.

This singular book gives a very nice popular overview of the state-of-the-art in paleontology, chronologically covering everything from the Archean to the evolution of man. It is a beautifully illustrated and well-written book, although the text is perhaps sometimes a bit too technical and dense for the paleontological novice.
And please don't buy some creationists' claims that this is science fiction. The contents of this book is based on material from thousands of scientific articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as "Nature" and "Science", representing the fruits of the hard labour of paleontologists from all over the world. And the fossil record, even if it is convincing in itself, is far from the only support for evolution. Independent evidence for evolution can also be found in biogeography, development, molecular analyses (gene DNA, junk DNA, mtDNA etc), anatomical analyses, and even field observations of new species evolving. This large amount of evidence is why evolution is considered an established and undisputable fact. Of course, if one rather than facts wants comic book fantasies such as humans coexisting with dinosaurs and evil scientists conspiring to hide the truth, then one should look for creationist books instead. Or comic books.

Gould makes clever analogies & comparisons of natural sciences with common things around us. Most of the topics he covered would be a bore to read by itself but Gould masterfully entertains & educates with his adroit prose & humorous side comments.

It is a bit on the long side and some of his comparisons used fads of the early 90's which are not relevant today; but all in all, the book is a winner.

Stephen Jay Gould writes another volume of essays that are profound in scope. Trying to review essays in book form is difficult, but taking the task at hand, here is what I have to say.

These collected essays are enlightening and thought provoking. They vary in scope and content, but are always stimulating. The author has a knack for making the reader think, as I suppose all good professors should, a task well taken here.

The writing is easily followed and straight forward with a smattering of Gould's wit thrown in for spice. The authou's sense of humor is also apparent. The essays are educational, even as the author brings two apparently different articles and ties them together with a common thread.

I found a cornucopia of disparate objects that fueled my intellectual pleasure, as I read through the book. Anyone interested in Natural History or just curious about life should read this book.

The author's flowing writing style is evident, his teaching skills are there to enjoy and learn from.

Read and enjoy good writing.

This is the sixth of the collections of Gould's essays from the magazine Natural History. Gould has commented that, as he got better at essay writing, he found the earlier volumes less pleasing. Certainly, as he went along, he improved both in literary quality and in the depth of his treatment of issues. Gould is amusing, but always with a serious purpose: to educate the public about how science works, and how, often, it doesn't. In particular, the section of three essays gathered under the heading "Numbers and Probability" is very good at making one think about the real nature of "the odds."

Stephen Jay Gould's brilliance is evident as always in his ability to make the esoterics of great science available to people who have not thoroughly studied his field. He doesn't dumb it down, nor remove such huge slices that we are fools walking that dangerous tightrope of a little knowledge. Equal evidence of his genius is his broad base of real knowledge. He knows linguistics, for example; he would recognize that he does not know as much as Noam Chomsky, but he knows a great deal more than the typical lay person.

He uses this knowledge at the beginning of this book to construct a carnival of phrenology and psychoanalysis that gives a social context to his later discussion of ontogeny and phylogeny. Looking at the subject of the title outside of this context would make a reader feel awfully disconnected from the people who believed this. It helps to rememeber that history is the story of a species and its learning process.

One hundred years from now, people may know things that make them skake their heads at our use of protease inhibitors in treating AIDS, CD-ROM's in computer operations, or at the fact that only autistic kids, and not even all of them used weighted vests to develope proprioceptive skills.

The book made me feel superior, and at the same time humbled. No single person is capable of what our species can do as a whole.

Ontogeny and Phylogeny by Stephen Jay Gould is an enlightening book filled with facts, history, knowledge, science, sociology, biology and mixed with this is the Gould Factor.

By this, Gould Factor, what I mean is this. There are illustrative bits woven into the tapestry of this scientific work. I always liked how Gould did this... always bringing more information into the mix. Then, when you think you know how he is going to arrive at the conclusion he brings you into a whole different level of thinking and you become enlightened and then, only then, do you see... you arrived at the conclusion... via the Gould Factor.

Now, some may say that, why doesn't he get to the point... ah those are the impatient ones... as knowledge to be wisdon has to be appreciated... thought through to the end and only then... will the enlightenment be appreciated. The same has to be said about Ontogeny and Phylogeny, as the development of the individual leads to the development of the whole (type).

Gould's clever brilliance is evidenced here and you'll see him working the esoterics, bringing the reader on, interlacing ideas, and ultimately to the conclusion. A learning process that is evident here as only Gould could do. Gould also brings the reader a broad base of knowledge at the begining forming a foundation. From this foundation, the book begins to construct the major points of Gould's perseptiveness, then later we get the major point of the work.

I found the book to be very well written with excellent documentation and a classic of felicity of style.

This is one of the three most influential books I've read in the last 20 years.

"The world was a better place when I was young," "Kids today are worse than they were 20 years ago," are two of the more egregious examples I hear of people confusing ontogeny (development of an individual) with phylogeny (development of a type or collective). The world has always been a complicated and widely mixed placed. It is far more likely for an individual's perceptions to change in the course of a lifetime than the world that we perceive.

Gould's essays (and books collecting them) are pleasant bits of fluff that entertainingly (and sneakily) deliver well-informed and timely bits of science. "Ontogeny and Philogeny" goes the next level down, using interesting bits of (mostly) science to deliver well-informed and timely bits of philosophy.

I bought this book because I was curious about the relationship between ontogeny and philogeny. "Does ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny?" was on my mind. No, says Gould. Better, he describes what that relationship is. Along the way, he explains how humans are differentiated from other species (a topic well expanded by Jared Diamond in "The Third Chimpanzee").

Gould starts with the history of science (Lamarck, Ernst Haeckel); philosophy (Anaximander, Aristotle); and psychology (Cesare Lombroso; Freud). He starts by showing the history of the perceived relationship between phylogeny and ontogeny. The illustrative bits of science follow as he discusses heterochrony and paedomophosis, showing how phylogeny relates to ontogeny, which I will grossly oversimplify: ontogeny selectively draws from phylogeny with occasional complete departures that may or may not be helpful (which is also true of the retained bits of phylogeny). The past may be selectively retained, but retaining one part does not necessitate the retention of all parts or even the relationship between the retained parts. Gould takes 409 carefully reasoned and well-written pages to get there. It's worth the trip.

The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould is a collection of thirty essays with a varied scope, but the contents is encompassing. Bringing history with each essay is the hallmark of Gould and he will not disappoint you here.

This is Gould's fourth in a series of books that are collections of his essays that were found on the pages of "Natural History." These essays bring us life that is a product of a contingent past, not just a timeless law of nature. Gould brings meaning to his essays through an extensive history and a calculated musing to seemingly contradictory themes.

Dinosaurs and the astroid, Hottentot Venus and even baseball are in this book. Gould brings us lucid, cogent commentary and a writting style that will educate you gracefully. Gould has an ability to bring the scientific knowledge to the layperson with erudition and understanding.

Read and enjoy this book... complete with just a little quirkiness and a sense of humor.

When I first cracked this book as a graduate student, I had little idea of what I was in for: sure, I expected a little on Darwin's theories and some history, but nothing else. What I found was an astonishingly rich panorama of issues connected to Darwin, the nature of science, and of course its misuses. From the trials of the Hottentott Venus to the mistakes of Audobon, Gould has fascinating and humorous perspecitives to bring. It was the ideal diversion - procrastination can be sooo delicious - from the dessicated economics and statistics that I had had to read and the start of a great love affair with this author, one of the finest writers alive.

Gould writes with the most astonishing lucidity and the most elegant style that I have ever read in a science writer. Indeed, those who disagree with him or look down on him - and there are many at Harvard - sarcastically cite his writing talent as the "reason" for his enduring success! Well, I would hope so. If they could write as well as Gould, then perhaps they could advance their opposing views, like, more effectively.

Highest recommendation.

This was my first introduction to Gould. I think any of his Reflections in Natural History are the best place to start because of the multiple essay format. I read with strange amusement another review about how p.c. Gould is. Ignore him. You will learn a lot about both scientific history as well as basic principals of evolution

This is a fan's book, in every sense of the term. Thanks to his writings about baseball in such unlikely places as the New York Review of Books, and his appearance in Ken Burns' documentary about the sport, Stephen Jay Gould's position as one of the premiere intellectuals who also happens to love baseball will forever be secure; this collection of works will keep that legacy alive for a new generation. Because these writings are generated from Gould's own love of the sport, the focus tends heavily toward the two teams he spent most of his life watching--the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. And that's fine, because no other two teams have encompassed the heights of triumph and tragedy this sport has to offer. For the non-scientist, Gould may get a bit technical at times, such as his explanation of why the .400 hitter is as extinct as the dinosaurs, but even this journalism major managed to wade through it all. A passionate lovesong to the sport from a fan who left his seat too soon.

Stephen Jay Gould grew up in New York City as a Yankees' fan during the late forties and into the fifties, a great time to learn to love the game of baseball. For those of us fortunate to grow up during this era many of Gould's stories are familiar yet entertaining from his point of view. Dusty Rhodes' heroics during the '54 Fall Classic and Don Larsen pitching his way to perfection in '56 are two examples. The only drawback to the book from my point of view is the emphasis on why he feels noone will ever hit .400 anymore. I am not a fan of statistics and charts, and a special section is devoted to figures which I realize entertain many baseball fans, but not this one. I prefer stories, and Stephen Jay Gould has provided a number of them for baseball fans to cuddle up with. It's a shame that his life was cut short in May of 2002 from cancer, but he did provide us with this book in addition to his comments on Ken Burns's video history of baseball a few years ago.

I just read this book and think it's a terrific monument to a great scientist. He will truly be missed, but this book also shows a side of Gould that some of us have never seen before -- the human side. Reading about the perpetual heartache he suffered rooting for the Red Sox (despite the fact that he was a Yankees fan) brings him down off his pedestal and into the bleachers with the rest of us bums. And the depth of intelligence and nuance he brings to the subject of baseball is marvelous to behold. It's a shame that he wasn't alive to see this book published, as it seems the idea was very close to his heart.

By the way, the jacket art -- by Vanity Fair cartoonist Arnold Roth -- is quite frankly one of the best I've ever seen. Check out the guide in the back of the book pointing out the various players depicted. Buckner on the back flap is priceless.

I did want to quibble (gently) with the reviewer below who complains that editorial "updates" about things Gould had mentioned were not included. Whatever his problems with the work done on the book, it looks as though he's somewhat mistaken about that one point; the information about McGwire hitting 70 home runs is in a caption in that chapter, and a coda of sorts to Chuck Knoblauch's season is in a caption, too. (It talks about his dismal performance in the World Series that followed.) So it appears that the editor chose to include whatever information seemed necessary in the book's captions -- and if you're not a reader of captions, I guess those facts are easy to miss. Anyway, personally I didn't find that any more editorial explication than that was needed. I thought it struck a very nice balance, myself.

I found SJG's little book quite interesting in that he chases rabbits through fields of astronomy, calendrics, history, American Indian lore, mathematics, theology, and other areas including savants.

He fails to include Julian days as a means or reckoning the passage of time in a very orderly fashion. Always entertaining but never conclusive on the subject, since he properly makes a distinction between The Millennium of Apocalypse and the millennium of the calendar, he leaves conclusions to the reader. He points out that the media did get it right, according to one school of thought, in the 1900-1901 century transition and the nineteenth century passed to the twentieth Dec. 31, 1900/Jan. 1, 1901. The mid point, however, was signaled by LIFE magazine publishing its mid century issue in January 1950 rather than 1951.

What we are really concerned with is the consistent ordinary, everyday reckoning of time, days, and years in an orderly and rational manner. It doesn'take a PhD in calculus or differential equations to deduce that the twentieth century is 20th hundred years, that two millennia is two thousand years and until the 2,000 years have been completed at the END of year 2,000 the twenty- first century and the thirdmillennium have not arrived. As they say about opera...it isn't over till the fat lady sings.

Buy a copy if you are a fan or borrow a copy if you like science fiction mixed with lots of unusual facts. You will find the finale a bit poignant, but don't cheat, resist the urge to peek.

I love Gould's essays. I hate Gould's self-indulgence. Gould always has something interesting to say, and this book is no exception. But he needs an editor who isn't overawed.

As in his delightful collections of essays, Gould finds the excitement in interesting tidbits and magnifies them in an interesting way. In Questioning the Millennium ("two n's," Gould reminds us with characteristic pedantry but an unnecessary apostrophe), we learn not only about the never-ending conflict over when the century ends (Gould claims to take no side, although he really does), but also about a wealth of millenarian trivia (only one n here). It's interesting trivia - little pieces of history that, as Gould notes, we always mean to look up but never do. He details apocalyptic visions of the millennium, the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars, and nature's frustrating imprecision - all worthy subjects.

Unfortunately, the inherent interest of these topics is somewhat compromised by Gould's ever-present reminders that he really, truly is an Essayist - which, to him, means someone who likes to advertise his vocabulary and seeks admiration of his ability to turn a neat phrase. Problem is, sometimes he gets a little lost in his own self-wonder. Several times, I had to look back to pick up a thread of thought I figured I must have missed - only to find it absent. I like stylish writing, but I don't like writing that calls attention to itself. Gould's writing does, and it wears thin.

But Gould nevertheless has a truly original mind, and I love how he thinks. It's worth trudging through a book that, like many of his essays, is a little too long and a little too cute to get the benefit of his wonderful thinking.

One other thing. The book ends on a beautiful note, but it's essential to build up to it. Don't skip ahead.

Whatever your opinion about the Millennium, this book will give you some facts to fill in the blanks of your knowledge. Gould is expert at this sort of explanation and at backing up his opinion with reason.

It's well written, enjoyable and even surprisingly heart-warming in parts.

Gould's opinion will be disappointing to all those people who feel that if something arbitrary was held true by experts in the past, we must follow it to the letter forevermore. His opinion will be refreshing to those who want to know WHY, WHAT, and WHEN and to those who would celebrate while the red-faced sticklers grumble.

Time's Arrow Time's Cycle written by Stephtn Jay Gould is a book that takes human thought to a new level in comprehending geology's vastness of history... the discovery of deep time. Gould works this book's major theme in the role of metaphor in the formulation and testing of scientific theories as the directionality (narrative history) of time's arrow or the immanence of time's cycle (immanent laws).

This book is both an account of geology's greatest discovery and philosophical commentary on the nature of scientific thought. As this thought takes us from thought of time in thousand of years to billions of years, inspired by empirical observation of rocks in the field.

Gould follows a single thread through three documents that mark the transition in our thinking: Thomas Burnet's four-volume "Sacred Theory of the Earth" (1680-1690), James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth (1795), and Charle Lyell's three-volume "Principle of Geology (1830-1833). Gould shifts through these writings giving the reader a history and background needed for a progressive march to the truth of the geological history through an enlightened observation.

Reading this book will captivate the curious reader and helps the human mind understand the vastness of time and the struggle to understand it.

The title of the review is an homage to Gould's oft mentioned love of baseball. This book is a cogent explanation of how European scientists (natural philosophers) recounciled the narrative tradition of history inherited from the Judeo-Christian template with the eternal return perspective of the Classical civilizations. Both view points-as-metaphors shed light on interpretation of the geological record. There are both serial and cyclic elements in the history of the earth, so the scientific community found truth in spite of the fact that individual scientists tended to emphasize one perspective over the other.

Gould exposes the 'cardboard cut-out' Whig version of history that most working scientists have received uncritically as hurried historical preambles to their study of geology per se. James Hutton, for example, is held up as a paragon of the field geologist who supposedly preceded his assertion of the existence of 'deep time' with countless hours in the field. Not so, says Gould. In fact, Hutton did his field work after he conceived the idea of a lengthy earth history and merely used his field observations to bolster his claim. Thomas Burnet, author of the much made-fun-of Sacred Theory of the Earth, is revealed to have been a champion of uniformitarianism before Hutton even conceived of it. Burnet refused to advance causes for events described in the Bible that could not be explained by the laws of physics as advanced by Isaac Newton. Finally, Charles Lyell is exposed as a master of rhetoric who conflated methodological and substantive aspects of uniformitarianism in order to sway his audience. No member of the scientific community contemporary to Lyell clung to the Mosaic timescale. He merely used it as a strawman. It was Lyell who managed to mate the narrative and eternal return perspectives into a coherent view of Earth history. First he did so by insisting the apparent progress observed in the fossil record was caused by the immense scale of the cycles of Earth history. Eventually he conceded the reality of evolution and allowed for the existence of an arrow of time whose path did not curve.

Gould's book is modified from a series of lectures, which is probably why there is so much uncharacteristic repetition of themes and ideas in this book. It was the only aspect of this book that I found irritating. Gould is also candid about his pride at uncovering various inaccuracies in the received wisdom and unearthing original themes to explain patterns in the history of geology. I have heard other people complain about this personality trait. I have no problem with it and believe that his satisfaction with his own cleverness is quite justifiable.

Stephen Jay Gould's love of science history really shows through in this work, which focuses on changing ideas about time and geology. It's well-researched and makes some very intriguing points about science in general, but if you have no patience for geology you probably won't get that far - it's nowhere near as accessible as his essay collections, but that's only to be expected. Every science major should read this book, and so should anyone who likes to think of themselves as well-informed about history and science.

I believe the sub-title for this book is quite fitting. R.M. Hazen and M. Singer aptly describe the major questions facing the physical sciences. This is not, however, a book for initiates of academia. It is written in a very simplistic manner, with a touch of humor intersperced within. I would describe it as a light read on a manner of subjects.

If any of the articles arose your curiosity, ample suggestions for further reading are included in the back of the book. All-in-all, it was an enjoyable book suitable for a sunny afternoon read.

This is a wonderful book to read for anyone who enjoys science but doesn't have a science degree. This book explains questions many have pondered and it does it's best to give scientific explinations without making the reader feel as if he/she is inferrior to knowledge because they don't have a degree attached to their name. This book explains it in ways for everyone to understand, that I appreaciate.

Some have suggested that we will see the end of science when physicists eventually develop a grand unified theory. Robert M. Hazen and Maxine Singer disagree, and show that science is likely to be an ever-expanding sphere of inquiry and study far into the future. The book is clear, concise, and easy to read, with a thought-provoking introduction by Stephen Jay Gould. This is a great little book for airline flights, evenings before bedtime, or a sunny afternoon on the back deck.

The book is non-technical, without a single equation (though some of us may find this a disadvantage). Subjects include cosmology, dark matter, the fate of the universe, energy, chemistry, symmetry, geology, biology, the origin of life, aging, evolution, genetics, human development, and the search for extraterrestrials. Each section in the book provides a summary discussion of the current state of knowledge. However, it frequently only hints at the big questions in science (though most ca! ! reful readers will be able to surmise them). In this, the book's content is somewhat different from the description given on the cover. Interestingly, the book never discusses why black holes are not black.

Generally I found the book technically correct, though often abbreviated (something that would be hard to avoid, given the book's broad scope). Sometimes the abbreviated style leads to explanations that are potentially misleading. For example, the discussion of the second law of thermodynamics (see page 95) is only four paragraphs. In this short space the authors give several examples of the second law at work, concluding with the statement:

"The second law defines the direction of events in time. Water flows downhill. Rooms get dusty. Supplies of fossil fuels diminish. We grow older."

Given a correct understanding of other circumstances, the first two examples describe the second law. However, in each case we can find counter examples if we ignore the unmen! ! tioned conditions under which the second law applies. Wate! r will run uphill if pushed with an electric pump. Rooms can get less dusty if we clean them. Supplies of fossil fuels may renew over millions of years (and lots of energy from the sun). The problem with the presentation of these examples is that the book does not adequately describe the significance of spontaneous processes and the requirement for closed systems for which the second law applies. The second law of thermodynamics does not preclude open systems becoming more ordered, only that the overall disorder of any closed system must increase with time.

The example of growing older is particularly susceptible to misleading conclusions. Aging is a poorly understood process that probably has a significant genetic component. At any rate, our bodies are not closed systems. We continually assimilate energy to drive our metabolic processes in order to stay alive. Consequently, using the aging process as an example of the second law of thermodynamics is especially inappr! ! opriate in such a condensed discussion. In a later chapter, the authors actually go into great detail describing the genetic component of aging, describing the cause(s) for aging as one of the big questions in science (see pages 230 -- 235).

Except for a few similar examples, however, the book does a good job of explaining the essential aspects of scientific principles and problems at a level with which most educated Americans will feel at ease.

In addition to having no equations, the book also has no figures. A few strategically placed figures would do wonders for this book, especially in the sections describing aspects of human anatomy (the brain in particular). Even a few line drawings would help polish off the descriptions that (in the absence of drawings) are sometimes hard to follow. Also, the book does not have an index (a big disappointment to me) so when you read it, use plenty of page markers and a bright yellow pen. That's the only way you will be able to! ! go back later and look up any interesting material for fut! ure reference.

Overall, however, this was a great book and well worth the reasonable price. I am glad I bought it and took the time to read it.

Duwayne Anderson

There are five authors represented in this audio tape.....Who could have thought it possible that, my favorite scientific author of all time, Stephen Jay Gould, wouldn't be the author of my favorite article among this collection? But in this particular audio I rate a Frenchman with an extraordinary sense of humor (Yves Coppens) and a linguistic/gene-pool orator (Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza) as writers-that-are-more-fascinating-than-even-Stephen Jay Gould. Yves Coppens happens to be a co-author of several other scientific tomes. He explains his theory about the separation of the apes and homonids in African geologic strata with the moniker, EAST SIDE STORY. More than just, "what a hoot!" this explanation makes all Americans proud, even though all of these events happen in Africa years and years ago! The intellectual stimulation of listening to the idea that language follows the speaker, particularly transient folks, may not captivate some--but when it follows lines that can be traced genetically with strong policical science connotations, that makes Cavalli-Sforza extraordinarily captivating reading/listening. I wonder if you can listen to this one just once?

In contrast to the previous rather bitter review, I think this is a very good book and a lot better than the the racism masquerading as science that is the Bell Curve - which Gould has read and demolished.
In terms of factor analysis, I used the Urchin in the Storm to teach factor analysis it's that clear and concise. Stuff the political viewpoint just read some very good essays.

An Urchin in the Storm by Stephen Jay Gould is about books and ideas, but more so about writing, thinking and study in method.

An Urchin in the Storm is divided into five different sections. The first two sections of this book group reviews that discuss the irreductibility of history, along the way the pleasures and challenges of contingency, in its two principle domains of life and the earth. The first section on evolution focuses upon structuralist and hisoricist alternatives. While the second, explains nature's complexity, (Evolutionary Theory, Time and Geology).

The third section of this book explores the theory and consequences, both political and intellectual, of biological determinism. The fourth section deals with "Four Biologists." While the fifth works with "In Praise of Reason." As we read on throughout this book, Gould makes his point and scores, as he exposes fallacies, expands on geology, give thought to biological determinism, and gives the reader a clearer picture of evolutionary theory.

This is a fascinating little book, as Gould works through this little tome, like the urchin, always presenting a tough exterior and continues to prickle the enemy.

For a collection of disparate essays this hangs together in the classic Steve Gould style. If you're a 'fan', this is a book you may have missed, but its definitely a 'must have'