Penguin, 1977, 271 pp, ISBN 0-14-013534-0. page views.

A stimulating tour of new ideas in palaeontology, botany, geology and much else - a marvellous read.

British Medical Journal

Stephen Gould's writing is elegant, erudite, witty, coherent and forceful.

Richard Dawkins
Nature

Unreservedly, they are brilliant.

New Scientist

About the Book

Scientific insight and literary flair combine in Stephen Gould's fascinating collection of reflections concerning - among other subjects - the importance and relevance of Darwinism, the question of size in nature and the bizarre sex life of a mushroom maggot.

About the Author

Stephen Jay Gould grew up in New York City. He graduated from Antioch College and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1967. Since then he has been Professor of Geology and Zoology at Harvard University. He considers himself primarily a palaeontologist and an evolutionary biologist, though he teaches geology and history of science as well.

Contents

• Prologue
  1. Darwinia
     1. Darwin's delay
     2. Darwin's Sea Change, or Five Years at the Captain's Table
     3. Darwin's Dilemma: The Odyssey of Evolution
     4. Darwin's Untimely Burial
  2. Human Evolution
     5. A Matter of Degree
     6. Bushes and Ladders in Human Evolution
     7. The Child as Man's Real Father
     8. Human Babies as Embryos
  3. Odd Organisms and Evolutionary Exemplars
     9. The Misnamed, Mistreated and Misunderstood Irish Elk
     10. Organic Wisdom, or Why Should a Fly Eat Its Mother from Inside
     11. Of Bamboos, Cicadas and the Economy of Adam Smith
     12. The Problem of Perfection, or How can a Clam Mount a Fish on Its Rear End?
  4. Patterns and Punctuations in the History of Life
     13. The Pentagon of Life
     14. An Unsung Single-Celled Hero
     15. Is the Cambrian Explosion a Sigmoid Fraud?
     16. The Great Dying
  5. Theories of the Earth
     17. The Reverend Thomas' Dirty Little Planet
     18. Uniformity and Catastrophe
     19. Velikovsky in Collision
     20. The Validation of Continental Drift
  6. Size and Shape, from Churches to Brains to Planets
     21. Size and Shape
     22. Sizing Up Human Intelligence
     23. History of the Vertebrate Brain
     24. Planetary Sizes and Surfaces
  7. Science in Society - A Historical View
     25. On Heroes and Fools in Science
     26. Posture Maketh the Man
     27. Racism and Recapitulation
     28. The Criminal as Mature's Mistake, or the Ape in Some of Us
  8. The Science and Politics of Human Nature
     29. Why We Should Not Name Human Races - A Biological View
     30. The Nonscience of Human Nature
     31. Racist Arguments and IQ
     32. Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determinism
     33. So Cleverly Kind an Animal
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index