Paperback ( )

I admit to coming to this book with a slightly unjustified negative bias. I'm not sure where I picked this up but I had the impression that SJG was both a "bit full of himself" and maybe not all that trustworthy anyway with his science. Can't recall where I picked up these impressions because I haven't read any of his books to date but certainly there was some reference in the work of EO Wilson to the effect that SJG was not a pleasant work colleague. Anyway, I shall try and put that behind me and review objectively. First, I find myself agreeing with the general thrust of SJG argument: that is, that the bacteria are the dominant species on the earth and always have been. (Though this ignores viruses as a life form because I suspect that viruses are probably greater in number and variety than the bacteria).
SJG's next point is that evolution is not necessarily towards increasing complexity or sophistication. And he goes to great lengths with a baseball analogy to show that where there are walls or limits to change (or scores) then this effectively prevents evolution in certain directions. I must confess that I think one of his diagrams is just plain wrong. It's that on p119 where he has batter's averages in earlier years ..say up to 1930 with a fairly wide spread in the standard deviation and a figure for more recent years where the standard deviation is narrower. In the second case he has moved the whole distribution closer to the right wall, claiming that the overall standard of play has improved (both by batters and pitchers). However, his X axis is the batting average and the mean figure hasn't changed. so the distributions should be one under the other ...not moved closer to the wall. The average hasn't moved closer to the wall at all. Improvement in play is not from moving closer to the wall but by the narrowing of the standard deviation. He seems dot assume that his batter's average is a measure of the objective quality of batting, but it's really a ratio which doesn't change much because the pitchers have also improved.
Actually, I found the whole baseball segment overwrought to make a fairly simple point. I suspect SJG was trying to express his common touch with the rest of humanity. (Through the baseball analogy) ......though his writing style belies this. I took a couple of samples of his prose and ran it through the Flesch test of readability. It came in at 44 and 45 which means that it's difficult to read (Grade 13). And I would concur. It's hard work mainly because he both uses big words, long sentences, and lots of expansions on ideas within the sentences (or qualifying statements). Here is a fairly typical Gouldian paragraph "This last-ditch defense of equine progress cannot be sustained. The conventional trends are by no means pervasive (though their relative frequency does increase through the bush, albeit in a fitful way). Several late lineages negate the most prominent trends, and a different outcome for the history of horses perfectly plausible in our world of contingency (see Gould, 1989)-would have compelled a radically altered tale". Not easy reading ...and not because of scientific words.

I did like his debunking of the ladder--like sequencing of the evolution of the horse and other popularisations of evolution. And I did like the diagram on p165 showing the expansion of mean and extreme values within branching evolutionary sequence. Though I did find myself wondering whether the left "wall" was truly a wall. I guess it's only a wall if the species can't degrade or regress into its ancestral form. And I'm not so convinced by this. Ok if you define a species as a strain that can't interbreed with ancestral forms then this may be correct. But at the borderline where new species are being formed there is a certain element of plasticity around interbreeding and hybridisation. And Darwin made the point that the fancy varieties of pigeons (like tumblers etc) that had been bred...if left to their own devices, would quickly revert to the common rock pigeon. OK a variety is not the same as a species...but it's also a question of exactly where one draws the line. And around the line there will be some fertile interbreeding.

I also found his logic a bit strange with the discussion of foraminifera (forams) (Fig 23 on p154). Ok he demonstrates that in three different geological periods forams started small in size but over time displayed a great range of specie sizes. But always the smallest sized predominates so (he claims) there is no trend to increased complexity. It's just what you expect when there is a "wall" a lower limit. In this case, the "wall" is 0.15mm because this is the smallest mesh size used to filter out the forams. But surely this is an artificial wall and there will be species which were initially washed down the drain but then, over time, some of those species increased in size and were then picked up in the sieves where it was registered as just another "small" species. around 0.15 mm. Probably doesn't destroy his argument about small sizes predominating and the larger sizes being a "tail" but it just seems a bit sloppy logic to me.
I did like the diagram on p180 and his associated commentary. He makes the point that animals and plants are just a small twig on the evolutionary chart ...and humans an even smaller twig. It does put things in perspective....though, I guess, I have long been aware of the predominance of bacteria and fungi (and viruses and phage ) among the living things. Actually, I understand that the phage actually outnumber bacteria by about 2:1 so SJG was also wrong about the bacteria being the modal life forms. (Though arguable if phage are truly independent life forms....however, even humans rely on eating plants and animals to survive so are we independent life forms?).

So where do I sit after reading and considering the book. I must confess that I'm impressed. he does introduce some radical ideas and argues for them very cogently...albeit with (to my eye anyway) a few slips. His writing style is a bit overwrought ...but understandable and sometimes quite delightful. I was going to give it 4 stars but I think I'll upgrade that to 5 and I might even seek out some more of his work. ( )

Good for people who want to see evolution as a tool of humanity. ( )

Stephen Jay Gould was an iconoclast who was never afraid to take on scientific dogma or the so-called creationist crowd. This book isn’t any exception.

Gould explores the false notion of evolutionary “progress” and by examples in baseball batting averages and other down to earth everyday understandable analogies, eases into the idea of changes in statistical variation (little understood) versus central tendency: averages and medians, etc. that so often leads to logical or common sense errors. Have I lost you yet? Hang in there.

Anyway, it all comes down to the fact that evolutionary change has little or nothing to do with progress but alternately mainly changes in variation. Gould does a very good job of proving this hypothesis.

Caveat: you aren’t going to feel that special when you finish the book.

Readable, if you are willing to make the effort and sometimes payed attention in school, and approach this with an open mind. Hey, I’m optimistic about you!

As a bonus makes the best argument for extraterrestrial life I’ve ever read, but you ain’t gonna find it by scanning the sky for a message from the cosmos. ( )

> Barthelemy (Amazon) : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/customer-reviews/R32M23UO7RFDGR?ref=pf_vv_at_pdctrvw_sr...
> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Gould-Leventail-du-vivant--Le-mythe-du-progres/25...