Contents:
The Red Sox had already won three games by this game, the sixth in the series, so if they had won the game, the World Series would end with them the champions. But even if they lost this game, there was still a seventh game to play. How did one play in the sixth game "take away the Series"?
Gould collected the evidence of this revisionist history—much of it in sports journalism, where writers seldom have time to track down details of apocryphal stories that "everyone knows. As he says, "something deep within us drives accurate messiness into the channels of canonical stories, the primary impositions of our minds upon the world. If you want to persuade people, and animate them to emotional investment in political decisions, you can't bother with the "accurate messiness" of reality. For instance, yes, crime has decreased as prison populations have increased, for instance, but there is not a one to one correspondence from state to state, or in types of crimes, or even over time.
That two phenomena co-occur is no clue to causation.
And yet, how does one answer false conclusions? Then we must also deal with the problems caused by who writes or concocts the stories we hear. It is true that the victors tell the world their version of what happened. And so we think that what is coincides with what ought to be; might therefore creates right. History, sociology, psychology, as well as science, are all infected with this seemingly inevitable "silly and parochial bias.
And dinosaurs only died because of a once-in-known-history collision of an extraterrestrial object with earth. Dinosaurs had held pride of place for over million years. Mammals didn't "vanquish," but were an accident of history, "for reasons.
Especially because this book was published posthumously, I must just add my regret that for all Gould's vast knowledge he never found the occasion to study Post-Colonial theory seriously, a rubric which includes gender studies, culture studies, ethnic studies, philosophy, and significant portions of post-modern thinking. He would there have found ample support for his arguments about human tendencies to think in terms of super-imposed social story forms; in general, the term in the humanities for these forms is "Master Narratives.
The usual mixture of essays. Most of them connected in one way or another to Darwin. He mentions that Origin was published in probably around 50 times. And about the other event years later. One about Nabokov, arguing that he would have been or was a scientist that surpasses his fame as a novelist. Science painters, Frederic Church and Isabelle Duncan.
He talks about the curious tale of the creation of earth by God, why he always found the creation of the firmament, second day, negligible but changed his mind when he considered the context of the times. Narthex of Saint Marco. The term evolution in its original meaning is the coming of something inherently existing.
As such it is still used in Astronomy. The sun evolves to a white dwarfs.
I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History [Stephen Jay Gould] on bahana-line.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Stephen Jay Gould's. With I Have Landed, Gould once again applied biographical perspectives to the I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History.
The wonderful tale of Haeckel with his phylogeny follows ontogeny. Known to contemporaries as faked- but still in the textbooks a hundred years later. Nice denouncing by Aggasiz. A guy, Sir Thomas Browne in 18th century who proves that the common view that jews stink is false. Tiedeman who proves that negroes are not inferior - and suppressing the data he found that their brain is smaller on average. Blumenbach, credited, or discredited with the foundation of racism by dividing mankind in 4 later 5 races was himself also of the opinion that there are differences.
Except that he thought that Caucasians are more beautiful. Literally the people of the Caucasus. Published months before his death, "I Have Landed" represents the capstone on thirty years of science writing by Stephen Jay Gould. As such it features all of his top hits: Having now read his entire collected essays, I can say that very few scientists are able to bridge the gap between the technical and popular with such clarity of thought.
A last morsel of an inquisitive mind, a great book. La ciencia se inmiscuye en todos los resquicios de nuestras vidas: Y La ciencia se inmiscuye en todos los resquicios de nuestras vidas: Regina Spektor es una cantante, pianista y compositora ruso-americana. Tiene unos dedos bastante diestros para las teclas de un piano, y una voz melodiosa, pero es una compositora extraordinaria. Lo de Gould era la ciencia. Gould no la desmenuza ni la rebaja; lo que hace Gould es amasarla en textos que no son simplemente digeribles, sino en lecturas agradables, en historias ricas en detalles.
Ah, y escuchen a Regina Spektor. This is the tenth and final collection of essays from Stephen Jay Gould, with most of these essays coming from his regular monthly essay in Natural History magazine. And I am quite sorry that I have read all of the collections, for that means an era has ended in my reading life.
When he died, in , the Creationist trend was dying, but the Intelligent Design trend was gaining steam. The End of a Beginning in Natural History could also be the title of a sober eulogy. For the last 20 or 30 years, Gould has stood for "pluralism", which, to his opponents, means woolly-mindedness. Others, especially the shorter ones not written for Natural History magazine, are a bit thin. It was with bittersweetness that I read Gould's final collection of Natural History essays.
The title This is the tenth and final collection of essays from Stephen Jay Gould, with most of these essays coming from his regular monthly essay in Natural History magazine. Several essays deal with continued attempts to remove the teaching of evolution from American schools, and how Gould is mystified as to how people could feel personally or spiritually threatened by the theory of evolution.
When he died, in , the Creationist trend was dying, but the Intelligent Design trend was gaining steam. He ends this collection with four short essays, having to do with his personal response to the events of September 11, , and noting how acts of kindness are what save this world from despair.
And I may, at some point, have to return to the first of his books of essays from Natural History magazine Ever Since Darwin , and begin reading them all over again. Dec 19, Sandra rated it really liked it Shelves: Not for the faint of heart: Gould liked to use simultaneous stories from two or more seemingly unrelated fields to explore deeper truths common to both. Gould defends the tedious rigors of biological taxonomy and its contribution to the advancement of Not for the faint of heart: Gould defends the tedious rigors of biological taxonomy and its contribution to the advancement of science against enthusiasts who would glorify the role of sheer creative inspiration.
He is fascinated by all matter of weird speculation and crossovers between science and theology and science and literature. He is an advocate for precision and tireless research both in science and history. The book is a wonderful tribute to Darwin, Linnaeus and a handful of other scientists and thinkers whom Gould admired.
May 31, Charles rated it it was ok. I feel guilty for not liking this book. Stephen Jay Gould is brilliant and well-read and well-spoken and highly respected in both his field and as a popular essayist. But I hate this book. There's hardly an essay therein that I was able to read in its entirety. Gould is much too long-winded; couple that with a fascination for minutia and obscure historical subjects, and your eyes glaze over and you find yourself skipping to every third word then every other paragraph, then conclusion. And fran I feel guilty for not liking this book.
And frankly, Gould comes off as a little smug and pedantic, which I think is the result of his less-than-straightforward writing style. Sep 30, Alex Lee rated it really liked it Shelves: Like many people, I am an admirer of Stephen Jay Gould. This collection of essays, like many of his works is full of wonder, passion and consideration. He explores many topics, researches into the history of things to show how ideas change -- and like the slow movement of geological time, so with the generations do our ideas change too. Gould muses on them, reflects on them and often presents how he thinks we can do better.
There isn't much overarching philosophy here. Gould is pretty focused on topic with each essay. He does present much of himself though, through his interests. He shows us that he is a lover of truth, life and all the wonder the world has to offer. That seems to be enough. Feb 28, Jennifer rated it liked it. I loved the ideas and content of the essays, as well as the so many facts and observations enriching them and the so many relations presented between science and many other fields arts, history, anthropology So, despite loving the content, I didn't enjoyed the whole reading process as much, which resulted in turn in a long procrastination to finish the book.
The book is divided into 9 sections, throughout most of which but not in all ev I loved the ideas and content of the essays, as well as the so many facts and observations enriching them and the so many relations presented between science and many other fields arts, history, anthropology The book is divided into 9 sections, throughout most of which but not in all evolution is a center piece.
My favorite section was the 8th "Natural worth" , with a couple of essays that went over the role of scientific theories on racism. Aug 10, Jen rated it it was amazing.
I don't think I would have found this book as fascinating if the author were not such a skilled writer. I think I said this in my last review, but he has to have been the most well-rounded man on the planet. He has such a wide range of knowledge: He is my new answer to the question, "If you could invite one person, living or dead, to dinner who would it be?
Preferisco le altre raccolte dei suoi saggi. Adoro le microstorie, ma qui sono farcite di correlazioni non sempre rilevanti: Interessante la nozione che Freud avrebbe basato parte delle sue teorie sull'assunto, allora in voga e poi rivelatosi infondato e assolutamente erroneo che l'ontogenesi ricapitoli la filogene S. Interessante la nozione che Freud avrebbe basato parte delle sue teorie sull'assunto, allora in voga e poi rivelatosi infondato e assolutamente erroneo che l'ontogenesi ricapitoli la filogenesi.
May 12, Chris rated it really liked it. It was with bittersweetness that I read Gould's final collection of Natural History essays. I started with his first, Ever Since Darwin, and read every collection. I learned a great deal about evolution and natural history. It instilled a love for the genre and I've gone on to read other authors in the field, Sean Carroll and Neil Shubin come to mind. Gould and Sagan were two of the giants popularizing science when I was growing up.
We will not see their like again, but we do see variations on a It was with bittersweetness that I read Gould's final collection of Natural History essays. We will not see their like again, but we do see variations on a theme and that's good enough. May 04, Ross rated it really liked it Recommends it for: A beautiful collection of Gould's writing.
Been thinking a lot about wonder recently, and think that he does a phenomenal job of conveying his own sense of wonder and inspiring others to ponder the world about them as well. Especially liked the essay on Nabokov and conventions and Gilbert and Sullivan and Karl Marx's connection with Darwinism and well, pretty much all of them.
Since the book is a collection of articles, it's easy to read them one at a time, in no particular order. And where you A beautiful collection of Gould's writing. Magenta Bat 4 Bat Detector 8. Echo Meter Touch 2 - iOS 9. Standard Sweep Net Butterfly Field Guide Mug 2. Insects Memory Game 6. Butterflies Colouring Set 9. Pentandria 1,piece Jigsaw Puzzle Birding Extremadura All Regions 4.
Birding Australia 2 All Regions Reference Collections Management Reference: Usually dispatched within 6 days Details. Usually dispatched within 4 days Details. Out of Print Details. About this book Gould's final essay collection is based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine — exactly consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from to Write a review There are currently no reviews for this book. Gould is a paleontologist as well as a historian of ideas. In both contexts, he is interested in evolution as an account of what actually happened.
His opponents, one of whom, John Maynard Smith, actually trained as an engineer, are much more interested in Darwinism as a timeless mechanism or set of mechanisms. Most of the biologists I know spent their childhoods building things - it hardly mattered what, so long as the bits fitted together in a satisfyingly logical way.
One professor of biology, when asked to be more precise, replied "bombs, rockets, radios". But Gould spent his childhood reading books and dreaming of dinosaurs. No wonder he became the scientist for the rest of us. Gould's essays from Natural History magazine - of which the handsomely produced I Have Landed is the 10th and final volume - are matchless examples of the strengths of a historical imagination roaming across a scientific subject. They are also better trimmed than the long book, with far less fat around the meat of the argument, partly because most of the serious arguments in his essays are ventriloquised through other people.
Gould resembled Isaiah Berlin, in that he could most successfully expound his own ideas when they were presented as coming from others. The historical sections of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory are packed full of evolutionary theory presented in the clearest and most comprehensible way. The avowedly theoretical sections are much more tangly, though the ideas he is presenting are not in themselves more difficult. Nonetheless, he did manage to knot together in the final sections several of his lifelong themes in a very comprehensible way, among them his objection to "gene-centric" ideas of evolution.
To the engineering mind, the wonderful thing about genes, ever since their chemical nature was unravelled by Watson and Crick, is that this nature turned out to be digital. DNA, like light and matter, comes in chunks that are precise and measurable. Just as the physicists were getting all woolly and mystical, the biologists got themselves a really hard science.
The differences of style harden into greater substance when you ask what the entities are on which natural selection can operate. Are they genes, or bodies, or even whole species? For Darwin, working 50 years before the word "gene" was even coined, they were organisms - individual bodies. Individual giraffes had more descendants because they had longer necks.