What do You think about Eight Little Piggies: Reflections In Natural History (1994)?
It's easy to think that we are the most ephemeral of creatures, our lifetimes but a blink in the overall scheme. One of the things I get from reading Gould is the knowledge that we are very ancient creatures. I am an ancient creature. On the cellular level "mitochondria and chloroplasts look uncannily like entire prokaryotic organisms (they have their own DNA and are the same size as bacteria). Almost surely, they began as symbionts within cells of other species and later became more highly integrated to form the eukaryotic cell (so that each cell in our body has the evolutionary status of a former colony.)" (p. 320) So, not only are we each a living record of hundreds of millions of years of ancestry, but the so-called "junk" DNA--the seemingly useless, nonfunctional copies upon copies of genes we possess--may actually permit the evolution of complexity. We are very ancient yet our species contains the mechanism for further evolution. In light of this, it becomes difficult for me to feel for very long any sense of dislocation from my time and place in the world. Such knowledge grounds one in a complex universe. "Life is continuous in the crucial sense that all creatures form a web of unbroken genealogical linkage." (p. 327)Here, too, is a reason I love reading. Highly recommended.
—William1
This collection of essays is Gould's last as an author but my first as a reader of him. They are somewhat eclectic, though grouped according to theme and overall evolution and scientific method crop up the most often. Technically, the approach is less diverse, with an opening starting with some personal or topical (at the time of writing) anecdote leading into a more general discussion of a Big Idea. This is somewhat irritating to me, because it reminds me of Radio 4's Thought for the Day, in which a news story is used to lead into some crass attempt to foist religion on to me.The main body of each essay is well argued and clearly explained and demonstrates that Gould had not only a thorough understanding of his subject but the history of it, too. I learned much about modern ideas about evolution and found his remarks on scientific method interesting and worthwhile. It is also clear that he found an ocean of incomprehension of evolution around him - which he tried to mop up with his books, knowing that they could hardly even have a measurable effect.I am left, however, with an even stronger desire for a book (preferable by Gould or Eldredge) in which a coherent description of evolution and all scales of operation is given. If anyone knows of one such, please mention it!
—Robert
