The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay ;
The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - New York : W.W.Norton & Company, ©1980. - 343 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm
Included Bibliography & Index
Prologue --
[Part] 1 : Perfection and imperfection : a trilogy on a panda's thumb --
The panda's thumb --
Senseless signs of history --
Double trouble --
[Part] 2 : Darwiniana --
Natural selection and the human brain : Darwin vs. Wallace --
Darwin's middle road --
Death before birth, or a mite's nunc dimittis --
Shades of Lamarck --
Caring groups and selfish genes --
[Part] 3 : Human evolution --
A biological homage to Mickey Mouse --
Piltdown revisited --
Our greatest evolutionary step --
In the midst of life --
[Part] 4 : Science and politics of human differences --
Wide hats and narrow minds --
Women's brains --
Dr. Down's syndrome --
Flaws in a Victorian veil --
[Part] 5 : The pace of change --
The episodic nature of evolutionary change --
Return of the hopeful monster --
The Great Scablands debate --
A quahog is a quahog --
[Part] 6 : Early life --
An early start --
Crazy old Randolph Kirkpatrick --
Bathybius and Eozoon --
Might we fit inside a sponge's cell --
[Part] 7 : They were despised and rejected --
Were dinosaurs dumb? --
The telltale wishbone --
Nature's odd couples --
Sticking up for marsupials --
[Part] 8 : Size and time --
Our allotted lifetimes --
Natural attraction : bacteria, the birds and the bees --
Time's vastness.
A collection of essays by reknown scientist Jay Stephen Gould drawn from his columns in Natural History. The essays deal with topics such as: evolutionary opportunism (nature is a tinkerer, making the most of what's available in the course of adapting to the environment); new information on Darwin and his contemporaries; racism and cultural relativism; the evolutionary pattern of sudden rapid change; the origin of birds or the warm-bloodedness of dinosaurs; and, Teilhard de Chardin as a co-conspirator in the Piltdown hoax.
9780393300239 0393300234
Evolution -- History.
Natural selection -- History.
Evolution.
575.0162 / GOU
The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - New York : W.W.Norton & Company, ©1980. - 343 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm
Included Bibliography & Index
Prologue --
[Part] 1 : Perfection and imperfection : a trilogy on a panda's thumb --
The panda's thumb --
Senseless signs of history --
Double trouble --
[Part] 2 : Darwiniana --
Natural selection and the human brain : Darwin vs. Wallace --
Darwin's middle road --
Death before birth, or a mite's nunc dimittis --
Shades of Lamarck --
Caring groups and selfish genes --
[Part] 3 : Human evolution --
A biological homage to Mickey Mouse --
Piltdown revisited --
Our greatest evolutionary step --
In the midst of life --
[Part] 4 : Science and politics of human differences --
Wide hats and narrow minds --
Women's brains --
Dr. Down's syndrome --
Flaws in a Victorian veil --
[Part] 5 : The pace of change --
The episodic nature of evolutionary change --
Return of the hopeful monster --
The Great Scablands debate --
A quahog is a quahog --
[Part] 6 : Early life --
An early start --
Crazy old Randolph Kirkpatrick --
Bathybius and Eozoon --
Might we fit inside a sponge's cell --
[Part] 7 : They were despised and rejected --
Were dinosaurs dumb? --
The telltale wishbone --
Nature's odd couples --
Sticking up for marsupials --
[Part] 8 : Size and time --
Our allotted lifetimes --
Natural attraction : bacteria, the birds and the bees --
Time's vastness.
A collection of essays by reknown scientist Jay Stephen Gould drawn from his columns in Natural History. The essays deal with topics such as: evolutionary opportunism (nature is a tinkerer, making the most of what's available in the course of adapting to the environment); new information on Darwin and his contemporaries; racism and cultural relativism; the evolutionary pattern of sudden rapid change; the origin of birds or the warm-bloodedness of dinosaurs; and, Teilhard de Chardin as a co-conspirator in the Piltdown hoax.
9780393300239 0393300234
Evolution -- History.
Natural selection -- History.
Evolution.
575.0162 / GOU