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Title: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 0-393-30700-X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (38 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: We're all lucky to be here
Comment: A difficult book but still accessible. Gould presents his thesis that the evolution of life on earth developed by luck. Gould uses the word contingency. Luck means that on top of the creative processes of evolution, such as Natural Selection, major selections, random events play a crucial role.
His device is the fauna of the Burgess Shale, animals from just after the Cambrian explosion, half a billion years ago.
Wonderful Life gives us the story of the reevaluation of the Burgess fauna that revealed them to be animals utterly different from anything alive today. Gould gives a fascinating biography of Charles D. Walcott, administrator extraordinaire, who discovered the Burgess Shale, and classified all its animals into existing phyla. Gould uses the image of a shoehorn to stress that these classifications were forced.
Gould then introduces us to the three men who re-evaluated the fauna: Harry Whittington, Derek Briggs, and Simon Conway-Morris. They return to the Burgess fauna with a suspicion that these animals might not be correctly identified after all. Gould describes their work in detail, letting Whittington, Briggs, and Conway-Morris show us how very different these creatures are.
Gould's point is that though the Burgess animals were exquisitely adapted to their environment, most of them left no descendant and, more importantly, the surviving creatures did NOT seem better adapted than their now dead counterparts. The lesson is that the fittest died too and that surviving lineages made it because they were just plain lucky. Survival of the luckiest.
To underscore his point, Gould uses the plot of Frank Capra's movie "It's a Wonderful Life": what would happen if we started again, if this or that event in the history of life on earth was different? His conclusion is that we probably wouldn't be here.
I read Wonderful Life for the first time in 1992. One of the rewards was that I was reading science as it was happening. If today we read Darwin, we can still converse with his thought and still appreciate the works, but we can never experience the thrill of reading the Origin of Species right off the press.
Some of the facts in WL have been disproven already, but most of the book's conclusions are still being debated. Gould is often condemned by his peers. Even Derek Briggs and Simon Conway-Morris, two of the heroes of WL, severely criticize his work. Is Gould right? Are we all just lucky to be here? Few professional evolutionists feel comfortable with Gould's conclusion. Time will tell.
Rating: 5
Summary: Probably One of My Favorite Books
Comment: This book is almost like a mystery novel, unveiling the increased understanding of and rediscovery of the originally misinterpreted Cambrian fossils of the Burgess Shale. In keeping with the scientific tradition, Stephen Jay Gould has been flamed in recent years due to disagreements with his scientific theories. And, Hallucigenia is portrayed upside-down. The original, mysterious creature remains, for me, more magical than the carefully-reconstructed and better-understood velvet worm.
This book is also one of John Fowles' favorites; if you've read Fowles' work, you know that he is profoundly interested in natural history, and that fossils play a large part in books like The French Lieutenant's Woman. He's a lucky man: he was able to hold and directly observe the Burgess Shale fossils.
Scientific arguments aside, Wonderful Life is one of my favorite books because of the breathtaking magic of the Burgess Shale animals. Stephen Jay Gould uses words like "mysterious" and "awe-inspiring" to describe these creatures that others have compared to "aliens." These many hundreds of millions of years ago, life was different; Opabinia had five eyes. Wiwaxia looked like a miniature hydrofoil porcupine. Original Hallucigenia was a mysterious . . . well . . . alien. If you are not familiar with the Burgess Shale animals (most people do know the Cambrian fossil trilobites - these make trilobites look "normal"), then you have a treat in store. It's hard to criticize the fossils' original discoverer, Walcott, because what would any of us make of these animals? "Lace crabs" and the mouth of Anomalocaris was a "jellyfish." Some jellyfish! Ow!
Gould advances arguments about evolution and the development of life that have prompted great argument; you can read his version in this book. No matter what you believe, or truths that have since been revealed, such as turning Hallucigenia right-side-up, there is no denying Gould's marvelous writing, the compelling story, and the wonderful, wonderful animals in Wonderful Life.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Outstanding Book, I Guess
Comment: I very much enjoyed this book, for the most part. It is very much accessible to those outside the field of paleobiology, and interesting to boot. However, I found Mr. Gould's conclusions on human nature and destiny, conclusions drawn from the work done by Harry Whittington, to be rather depressing. He concludes that humans are basically pointless; there is no destiny other than a 'drunken stumble'. Oh well, as a book it was a great read, made me think, and look for other stuff along these lines to read. I read it, I enjoyed it, and felt a bit better educated when I was though - what more could you ask for?
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Title: Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 0517703939 Publisher: Harmony Books Pub. Date: January, 1996 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals by Simon Conway Morris, Simon Conway-Morris ISBN: 0192862022 Publisher: Getty Ctr for Education in the Arts Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 0393311031 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 0393303756 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 1987 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Fossils of the Burgess Shale by Derek E. G. Briggs, Douglas H. Erwin, Frederick J. Collier, Chip Clark ISBN: 156098659X Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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