Word: goulds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gould's reluctance to "emote" environmentally is still evident, from statements in his introduction and the fact that only the first three of the book's 31 essays are devoted explicitly to ecological destruction. He discusses mass extinctions in later essays, but they're usually of the "millions-of-years ago" variety, long before Homo sapiens overwhelmed the world...
...Gould conveys the necessity of conservation, however, just as clearly as Band Professor of Science P.O. Wilson does in his recent Diversity of Life. Beginning with some real-life trouble in Tahiti, this message carries explicitly through Gould's first three essays, ending with a reflection on the loss of the limpets, a snail whose shell "looks like a Chinese hat of the old caricatures." Through Gould's superb interweaving of history and biology, the limpet becomes a poor pitiable and yet complex organism, with symbolic meaning for other endangered species...
...Gould's message rings even truer in the rest of his essays, which inform and delight the reader with the quirky and unpredictable nature of evolution. Each organism is a treasure, worth studying for itself and for what it means about the greater picture...
...each step, Gould personally and intimately cajoles the reader, anticipating each next thought. "At this point, you might say..." is one his favorite turns of phrase. Despite his railings against Social Darwinism and sociobiology's attempts to connect human society and animal behavior. Gould sees all of history and literature as an elaborate metaphor liking our lives to the bizarre and complex world of evolutionary biology...
...Gould's incredible mastery of the scientific and the literary realms makes him a rare gem in his field--in his world, he would be a rare fossil find. He can make science accessible, important and compelling all at once, while other writers struggle with any one of these tasks. Like the quirky and unpredictable sequence of evolution which Gould defends, his wacky and often random metaphors serve him well in the creation (evolution might state it better) of a unified set of essays...