More than any other modern scientists, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science.
Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights.
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A nice complement to the first part, is the 5-segment series 'Darwiniana' posted by TimeWizud in 2009 on YouTube. From the author's description:
"This is a lecture made by Stephen Jay Gould at Wittenburg University. I simply took his voice and added pictures and video. I do not own ANY of it!
The lecture was derived from Part I of Gould's book, "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History." Part 1 of the book is called "Darwiniana" and is composed of four chapters: Ch 1 "Darwin's Delay," Ch 2 "Darwin's Sea Charge, or Five Years at the Captain's Table," Ch 3 "Darwin's Dilemma: The Odyssey of Evolution," and Ch 4 "Darwin's Untimely Burial."
I've split the video into a few parts, each a little under ten minutes. After watching them, I hope you see how Gould incorporated each chapter of Darwiniana into the lecture. They revolve around Darwin and the birth of what Gould calls one of the greatest half-dozen scientific ideas of all time. He tackles fundamental questions and asks them in the form of riddles. The lecture was titled "Darwin's Revolution in Thought," because Darwin's ideas were radical and difficult for people to digest."
Author(s): Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Year: 1977, 1992
Language: English
Commentary: Small changes to the original epub: corrected toc (html and ncx), corrected titlepage layout, moved copyright page to beginning, complete and accurate metadata [UL]
Pages: 288
Prologue
1 | DARWINIANA
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 Nature’s Mistake, or the Ape in Some of Us
8 | THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF HUMAN NATURE
Part A Race, Sex, and Violence
29 Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View
30 The Nonscience of Human Nature
31 Racist Arguments and IQ
Part B Sociobiology
32 Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determinism
33 So Cleverly Kind an Animal
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
OTHER TITLES BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD PUBLISHED
OTHER TITLES BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD
