Product Description
Respected scientist Stephen Jay Gould suggests that perhaps variety--not complexity--is our true measure of excellence. To illustrate his theme, Gould discusses seemingly disparate topics such as a drunkard's walk, the absence of modern Mozarts, the evolution of the horse, the continuing dominance of bacterial life on the planet, and more. 50 illus.

Amazon.com Review
The human mind has a trusty device for simplifying a complex world: reduce to averages and identify trends. Although valuable, the risk is that we ignore variations and end up with a skewed view of reality. In evolutionary terms, the result is a view in which humans are the inevitable pinnacle of evolutionary progress, instead of, as Stephen Jay Gould patiently argues, "a cosmic accident that would never arise again if the tree of life could be replanted." The implications of Gould's argument may threaten certain of our philosophical and religious foundations but will in the end provide us with a clearer view of, and a greater appreciation for, the complexities of our world.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 47 reviews)

Wonderful concept - (somewhat) difficult to read

Well....
Gould's message is pure, and correct. We take complexity as a trend ("thing") that is presumably advancing with time, rather than recognizing it as a part of the Full House where there are right or left limitations, etc etc etc... (you can read the book:)

But from a critique point of view, Gould takes his basic concepts and...sort of...picks complicated forums to explain them, for the average reader.
I mean, I hate to say it, but the book could have been one-quarter to one-third shorter than it was, to say what it does...

I accept his conclusions, and I love his work and his contributions to American science and education. Gould was a great guy and a well-needed popularizer of science. But this book is a bit tedious for the lay-reader who has other things to do every day. Its too long - but for those that can tackle it, its an eye opener !
March 26, 2008

Much better than Taleb and Mandelbrot

This book is about how to analyze data. It is the clearest and best written book on the subject I have read so far. Other well known books on the subject include Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Taleb and The Misbehavior of Markets A New Kind of Science by Mandelbrot. Although all these authors are brilliant and their respective books have their merits, Stephen Jay Gould's book is much clearer. While Taleb and Mandelbrot obsess about the flaws of the normal distribution assumption underlying investment theory, they both struggle in offering pragmatic alternatives. Gould instead studies the shape of the entire distribution that he calls the "Full House" and remains comfortable within a traditional statistical framework without building any castle of cards (referring to Mandelbrot fractal geometry).

Gould takes you on a really entertaining quantitative learning expedition by following three separate themes: 1) the disappearance of the 0.400 baseball hitter, 2) his run in with a deadly disease, and 3) the theory of evolution. These themes allow him to flesh out his analytical skills and share with you concepts that are often counterintuitive and occasionally revolutionary.

In his struggle with a deadly disease he illustrates how the median outcome (only 8 months to live) did not worry him much. What mattered to him after studying the related data was the skewness of the distribution with a long right-hand tail (meaning many survivors with normal remaining life span unaffected by the disease). He then studied what were the characteristics of these long term survivors (age, overall health, etc...). He noted he did share these characteristics and sure enough he survived this disease just fine. In his case, the median outcome was irrelevant. It was not his most likely outcome. Within this chapter he also introduces the concept of walls or limits. Many distributions have a left wall as figures can't be negative for many variables including stock prices, income level, and survivors' lifespan. For Gould, `walls' are key because they dictate that the distribution can expand in only the opposite direction.

When he moves on to the disappearance of the 0.400 hitter, Gould shows that the distribution of hitters butts against a right wall (upper limit of human achievement). He observed that the average hitting percentage has not changed much over time. But, the best hitters percentages has declined. Yet, he makes a case that today's hitters are better than the 0.400 hitters of yesteryears. What happened is that all positions improved commensurately (fielders, pitchers). So, the 0.400 stat is not an absolute but a relative measure of when batters outsmarted the other positions. He comes up with this perplexing theorem: "as play improves and bell curves march towards the right wall, variation must shrink at the right tail. The worst players got much better, and so did everybody else. But, the best players margin of relative superiority has consequently shrunk. He measured this phenomena by observing the steady decline of the standard deviation of batting average over the past century. And, indeed it declined steadily. So, in this closed system an improvement in performance was not marked by a rising average, but by a decline in standard deviation. The graphs on page 119 illustrate this complex concept very clearly.

Next, Gould moves on where he left a legacy as a leading evolutionary biologist: the theory evolution. Contrary to what we think the theory of evolution was misnamed. Darwin wanted to use the terms "descent with modification" instead of "evolution." Gould states Darwin referred to "evolution" because he succumbed to the cultural pressure of his era. The latter was obsessed with progress and the superiority of mankind. Gould strongly suggests that Darwin's original phrasing was more accurate. Gould goes on explaining that the animal kingdom history is captured by a right-hand skewed distribution that buts against a left wall of minimal complexity: the bacteria. An animal organism can not be less complex than that. With random mutation managed by natural selection, some species can only become more complex (not less so). Yet, this is not evolution. Bacteria still dominate the animal kingdom. They are more adaptable, more prevalent, more indestructible than any other animal organism. They are the only ones who would survive a nuclear holocaust and who can live in outer space. The process of complexity is somewhat random. Stephen Wolfram had reached the same conclusion in his very strange book, A New Kind of Science where he suggested that evolution was not so evolutionary but random (and replicable through cellular automata processes). Thanks to Gould, I now realize that Darwin and Wolfram pretty much agreed.

In the last chapter, Gould addresses if human culture is butting now against a right-hand wall of human potential. He thinks that is not so much the case in the sciences where he feels we have much more to figure out. But, he feels it is the case in the arts. Will we ever get another Beethoven? Another Shakespeare? Or another Michelangelo? Most probably not. Charles Murray studying the same subject in his excellent Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 reached pretty much the same conclusion.
November 03, 2007

No bias in evolution towards greater complexity - explained

Does evolution have a tendency to make more and more complex organisms? Most of us would give a confident yes answer to this question; however this book convinces its readers that no such tendency exists. Gould sets out to prove that since evolution works by local adaptation, organisms can evolve to be less or more complex, according to the environment's needs. This is also recognized by Darwin; however Darwin contemplates a drive towards greater complexity which would arise as a result of biotic competition: When one organism evolves to be more complex, the other should be even more complex in order to displace the former. This is famously illustrated in the wedge metaphor in the Origin of Species. The argument of Darwin makes rational sense. What I liked about this book is that Gould does not argue against this notion, but instead makes a number of predictions that would allow him to differentiate between driven (towards more complexity) and passive evolution. Using empirical data, and a number of definitions of complexity (such as size, nervous system, or fractal dimensions of ammonites) he shows that scientific data supports passive evolution.
However, this book is way too long to tell this story. Gould intentionally builds his case very slowly, which by the way makes a very amusing read, maybe except the parts which are almost a eulogy for the bacterial kingdoms. I believe one could easily understand the whole idea of the book by just reading chapter 12 and looking at figure 29. This idea, albeit simple to grasp in hindsight, is not straightforward to imagine (like all real good ideas), and since it gives a way to think of evolution in broader terms.
Idea is as follows:
There is a left wall of complexity for being alive.
Organisms evolve to higher or lower complexity with no inherent bias toward neither. Since there is a left wall, they can't be simpler than a certain level, however the right wall is open, so the highest complexity attained by organisms increases.
The overall shape and mode of complexity distribution doesn't change.
April 10, 2007

Another Superb Offering

I have been rereading several books in my library on natural selection and came across this one sandwiched between "wonderful Life" and "Eight Little Piggies". The late Stephen Gould was near the top of my "best science writer" list. This was not due to only his literary quality (very high) but to both the always intriguing subject matter and his gentle exposition of natural selection. Unlike some scientists (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) he feels no need to bash, ridicule, insult or fight those who disagree with his view.

His own theories on species creation have been debated extensively but this book is all about contrast. On the one hand he stresses over and over that evolution is without guidance, meaningless to the change that is occurring. The story of the "evolution" of the horse is a good example with the point being that it is a FAILED end-product of evolution. In the huge bush of horse ancestors only one remains. Again, he points out that evolutionary changes were not done for the purpose of a future species. We, as human beings, naturally see current organisms as the final state of a long, continuously evolving pathway. This is absolutely wrong - we are simply at our current state and that's it

A good portion of the book was give over to the question, "Why are there no .400 hitters in baseball?" Paradoxically, he demonstrates that the extinction of this breed is a sign of overall general increase in excellence. This is the paradox - although natural selection is not directed by purpose our own actions are. Of the 50 million species only ours is aware that we are only one of 50 million. ALong the way we get acquainted with a variety of mathematical models, particularly the infamous bell curve that says so much depending on which way it is slanted. Overall - A
December 25, 2006

Yes and No

Having finished Stephen Gould's book Full House let me opine. An excellent book by all accounts, however, to quibble, he does not convince that there is no innate driving mechanism to greater orders of complexity in the universe. For instance, his argument that if you were to replay the tape of human evolution you would get a different result every time begs the question of yes, but how comes it turned out the way that it did....

In other words, he takes an assumption as fact, that everything happens by accident is evidence for him that everything happens by accident. I guess I don't really understand this....it seems to me hard to explain how sub-atomic particles became you and me. Yes, you can say it was all by accident, but it is just a little more than curious that at every stage of evolution, things took a quantum jump to a higher level of complexity and freedom (which goes with it). I've long since stopped disputing the facts of evolution which at this point are overwhelming, billions of bits of data from every field of science all converge on the same conclusion. However, whether it all just happened to be so for no paricular reason, with no outcome in view can't be proven.....

I occurs to me that we should stop thinking in terms of creation vs. evolution and think in terms of "emergence." You and I are what God is doing right now, what God was doing with dinosaurs is about what God was doing then....Now Gould is taking pains to get humans to stop thinking of themselves as some special example at the top of an apex, or that horses today are necessarily an advance over horses yesterday. As he points out, bacteria is much more successful biologically than humans, they're more numerous, they've been around much longer, they can survive miles underground and in water at temperatures of several hundreds....on and on. "Progress" simply defined, as leading to us because we're so special, doesn't exist.

However, however, however, he overdoes it. Because one can truly have it both ways. We can easily envision another quantum jump from homo sapien sapiens to another level. Yes, we might not be the apex, but that doesn't mean that the general trend of to higher orders of complexity is invalidated. He thinks trends, largely speaking, are greatly exaggerated. We see trends where they don't exist.

He says that the path from bacteria to you and me doesn't represent a "trend" but simply a movement away from a left wall of development. It's a very complex argument, but to use his example, imagine a drunk is walking along a path between a wall and a ditch, which way can he go? Into the ditch everytime. In other words, bacteria represent a left wall, a so simple you can't get lots simpler....the ditch toward complexity is where all the change is going to occur. And he uses many examples from baseball and such to prove his point.

There is, also, he says a right wall....in other words, you can only so far in the rightward direction before you max out. No baseball player CAN throw a ball at 140 miles an hour, world records in sports are becoming less frequent, the faster and faster greats are less and less common, not because they no longer exist, but because they're at the tether ends of the right wall....

But....here is exactly where I find him to be unconvincing. In a universe which went from subatomic particles to you and me, where does he get the confidence to put limits on what baseball players may yet achieve?? Even if it's all by accident, you can't rule out further accidents which may yet produce the baseball player who throws at 140 mph.

Second, he begs the question of why the left wall exists in the first place. You can say the left wall just so happens to be there in the nature of things, it just so happens to be the case that.....you can take things for granted. But that doesn't prove a daggone thing. To be intellectually humble, all you can say is, this is the way it is, if there's a "why" to it we haven't discovered that......

Since I'm going on and on, let me go on even further, many theistic evolutionists have made a human-centered error of defining what God is doing in the universe in terms of "progress." Everything mounts up to a higher and higher level of complexity which becomes defined as progress. That's a political imposition on the idea of evolution, as Gould makes clear, Darwin mostly only said of natural selection that it was a local adaption to environmental pressures. The notion of progress was a Victorian political doctrine based on manifest destiny of white colonialists. In the course of time, these two notions became fused....human-centrically. Social-darwinism being a case pre-eminent...

Progress does not necessarily imply evolution upwards and onwards to greater complexity leading to me and thee, evolution is not necessarily progressive. Granted.

But is it the case that simply because something isn't quantifiable it doesn't exist. Let's use one of Gould's own examples from sports. He says "hot hands" don't exist in sports because all of the statistical research shows that just because a basketball player (he used the example of a baseball player, but I'm switching over) makes a shot, doesn't mean he'll make another shot.

Statistically this doesn't appear. But in reality, anyone who has ever watched basketball knows, players get on a roll....we even have terms to describe it "when you're hot your hot" or "he's in the zone" or "he's unstoppable tonight." Mathematically there's no such thing as "when you're hot your hot" but does that then mean it doesn't exist? Harvard biologist extraordinaire Stephen Gould says yes, humble me, lawn tech extraordinaire says no.

Here's a perfect example of ruling something out simply because it isn't quantifiable. He's a great biologist but a poor psychologist. What is happening when a basketball player has "hot hands?" Statistically, apparently, nothing. Psychologically, the player has lost self-consciousness. A player (and often the audience) who is in the zone, that space where everything starts to click, is lost in the moment. The crowd and the player merge, one seething body making slam dunk after slam dunk.....Sit ringside and get caught up in the moment, it's a thing of beauty....mathematically beauty doesn't appear, but subjectively who can't get lost in wonder when it all starts to come together and the team is on a roll.....looking back you can say that was all just sports talk, but I demure....

There is a bridge between science and God and that is through the psyche, what's happening inside of people that can't be quantified....there is a pattern in the universe which maybe cannot be defined so simply as progress defined as higher orders of complexity leading to me and thee.....but however defined, it seems to me to be beyond the powers of linear thinking to simply rule it out because it can't be quantified....if it doesn't exist in math it doesn't exist at all seems to me to be a poor science indeed.....

As Shakespeare said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -JL

October 27, 2006

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

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The Mismeasure of Man
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Ever Since Darwin: Reflections on Natural History
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The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould
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Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History
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