Summary: The Hefty and the Deep
Comment: The late, great Stephen Jay Gould's massive tome The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is an impressive chronicle of the history of much recent and not-so-recent evolutionary thought. The past is solid, it has been said, the future is liquid: Gould's magnum opus reflects this dialectic between science's Newtonian desire for perfect prediction and the quirks of history which, though understandable and connected in retrospect, could hardly be predicted beforehand. Gould's anti-adaptationism extends to what he calls the nonfractality" of nature--that processes among genes do not translate smoothly to processes among organisms, any more than selective processes among organisms can automatically be equated with similar selective processes among species-individuals--which Gould considers true (if hard to visualize for us relative Lilliputians) units of selection, with much more integrity and individuality than, say, ecosystems
or populations. And yet this nonfractality applies even more forcefully to Gould's incompletely examined zoocentrism. In retrospect, cell evolution based on gene transfer and symbiosis, not animal speciation (uniformitarian or punctuated) may prove to be the paradigmatic evolutionary process; microbial metabolic evolution, for example, leading to the origins of speciation, dominated Earth history for over two billion years prior to the evolution of the animals which has long been the prime, if ultimately parochial, focus of Gould and other leading evolutionists.
Despite Gould's sometimes Byzantine meanderings (Matt Ridley in the NY Times accused him of logorrhea), which resemble the sort of scholastic infighting religious sects engaged in during the middle ages, his main foci are fairly clear: life is not just genetic or organismic but heirarchical with species-individuals and clades as bona fide individuals; the neodarwinian pan-adaptationists tend to neglect not only physical laws (such as those of D'Arcy Thompson's allometry, and perhaps of complexity theorists such as Brian Goodwin and Stuart Kauffman) working in organisms in the here-and-now, but also the Darwinian distinction (and Nietzschean dictum) not to confuse present function with geneological origin; and that life does not proceed in the smooth Uniformitarian manner that Darwin originally envisaged but rather in fits and starts, as proposed in the Gould-Eldredge punctuated equilibrium theory. In some respects the book resembles a swan song for natural history in an age of molecular biology. Gould's emphasis on contingency and history has a double purpose: 1) to keep open a space for natural history and good old-fashioned paleontology in an academic climate of deterministic computerized specialization, and 2) to emphasize the irreducibly historical quirks of evolution which make the particular story of our biosphere so special. There are some problems with this defense of contingency, and in part they are related to Gould's cachet as an international spokesman for Darwinian evolution. One is the short shrift Gould gives the lawfully deterministic physical sciences, even though he is clearly enthralled with genetic examples of exaptation and the effects selection in one of his levels can have fortuitously on another. Gould for example seems to have no notion of the possibility of historical but physical, law-based increases in biospheric biomass, increase in respiration efficiencies, and increase in the number of chemical elements and their rates of circulation-corrolaries of the second law of thermodynamics' tendency to increase entropy via complex systems (of which life is the most striking, but certainly not the only, example). Moreover, these unmentioned examples of evolutionary progressivism are probably best not explained by the non natural selection forms of complexity Gould provisionally blesses with his divine pen: the experimental mathematics of chaos algorithms (or at least those which would not dispense with Darwin
altogether). Perhaps the biggest oversights of Gould's huge book are his paucity of discussion of symbiosis or lateral genetic transfer-for Gould evolution is only about branching clades, not anastomosis-and his lack of ecology. Because they can be imagined reproducing, Gould argues eloquently for the reification of the taxonomic abstraction species (leading him to adopt the term "species-individual"), yet dismisses the ecosystem as a relative non-entity. (The most striking, if tentative example for me, was Gould's mention of Jeff Podos's work in which evolution at the level of the individual bird beaks used in feeding could lead-because change of beak shape leads also to different characteristic birdsongs used in mate recognition and avian courtship-to faster-evolving clades of bird species.) Yet ecosystems display successional processes of striking uniformity from a rapid-growing initial stage to more complex diverse mature forms, so reminiscent of ontogeny in organisms that the evidence for ecosystems as biological individuals must be seriously considered. Biogeochemistry and comparative planetology is also virtually absent here. Chemistry is embraced only in the case of genetic examples that support Gould's deeply evolutionary but anti-adaptationist view. While correct and salutory, Gould's verbosely panoramic perspective is hardly as comprehensive or modern as might be hoped. There is virtually no discussion of global ecological effects of evolution, for example. Despite the long discussion of minute variations in standard evolutionary theory, there remains a zoological neglect of the roles of microbes in generating real diversity in ecology and evolution, and the book is heavily lopsided toward theoretical work of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Although a significant document which should be of interest to virtually all biologists, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is a Gouldian swan song-a brilliant defense of classical natural history's comprehensive outlook, but ironically lacking in many of the recent biological facts and perspectives (not to mention disciplines) to merge the life sciences in an evolutionary view that is sufficiently comprehensive.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A new idea
Comment: To refute an earlier review:
Forms *do* come out of nothing. Anyone who watches ice freeze can see this.
I recall that an early biologist, looking at a spider's web, marveled at how the spider could assemble beads of goo with such regularity, so quickly. Of course, he didn't realize that this beautiful, complicated form arose on its own--it took a great physicist in the form of Rayleigh to see that.
Somehow, the biologists still haven't grown up: there is no creator, there is no vital force. Things in the world do what they do because they follow physical laws.
Gould's way cool. He follows a line of truly great biologists who say: pay attention!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A wasted Chance
Comment: It was with great sadness that I learnt of the death of Stephen J Gould. His witty and erudite essays will be missed as will his humanism and kindness. However, for those interested in learning about evolution this is not the book. The opening chapters are an excellent synthesis of the history of evolution prior ro and excluding Darwinism. However, from there it is all down hill. Gould's refusal to recognise - like Alfred Wallace before him and Noam Chomsky - that human nature including intelligence, sex preferences and what those of a supersticious bent refer to as the soul are a direct adaption arising from our species unique evolutionary path means that he is neither capable of or indeed willing to engage with the key nuts and bolts of evolution. As Dawkins said, we are gene machines. This - though reading Gould confuses the issue - does not mean we are puppets to be controlled by our genes. But, to deny that we are a product of our genes is to ignore what makes us human. And as for sprandrels - language, music I think not! - the Cambrian explosion etc, it may be true in a contingent world but in ours it is false. Recent fossil findings and a modicum of common sense - something can not spring up out of nothing - show that Gould was clearly mistaken.
If it is a real understanding of evolution you are after, do yourself a favour and skip this weighty tome and read: Dawkins, Maynard Smith, the Ridleys etc.
Customer Rating:
Summary: not a big fan of Gould, but its an excellent swansong
Comment: Perhpas I've read too much of Dawkins and Dennett, however, I've always thought that Gould over-hyped his own views (punctuated equilibrium, contingency, anti-reductionism, etc.). On that note, there's a lot in this book that I don't fully see eye to eye on with Gould, however, given its depth and breadth (and of course excellent writing style) this book is extremely important in that it gives an origin of species-like advocation for evolutionary theory and its many subtelies and nuances. I would consider this recommended reading for anyone interested or directly involved in any of the biological sciences, regardless of what camp you're in (i.e. Dawkins v. Gould) and that even incldes creationists, because I think if anyone opposed to evolution actually read this book cover to cover, they would have to seriously reconsider their objections. For that reason alone, even if you don't fully agree with Gould (like me) you can still appreciate this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A forlorn figure in the academic landscape
Comment: Gould is massively popular with lay audience but his ideas are not well represented in the academia, at least not in evolutionary biology. He is a good scientist, but an opponent of good reductionism, hence confused.
Bernt