The Man Who Found the Missing Link: Eugine Dubois and His Lifelong Quest to Prove Darwin Right

Rating:
Summary: Spotlight on an Obscure, Important Scientist
Review: Everyone knows that there is still religious (not scientific) opposition to the Theory of Evolution, but when it was unveiled, there was strong scientific opposition as well, which only decreased as more (and younger) scientists grew to accept the powerful explicatory capacities of the theory. The most unacceptable part of the theory was that humans themselves had evolved from some previous ape-like form. Scientific opposition to this idea started crumbling when the "Missing Link" between humans and their obviously non-human forebears was found. Eugéne Dubois was the man who found it, and his story has never been fully told. Now, in _The Man Who Found the Missing Link: Eugéne Dubois and His Lifelong Quest to Prove Darwin Right_ (Simon and Schuster), Pat Shipman has written an exciting biography of a neglected genius, and has given a narrative that tells how paleontology was done in his times, as well as how his ideas eventually became accepted within the scientific world.

The word "lifelong" in the subtitle of the book is almost literally true. Inspired by learning about the Theory of Evolution as a boy, Dubois learned that transitional forms between ape-like creatures and humans were hypothesized but had not yet been found. The boy realized that finding such a specimen would be possibly the greatest scientific discovery ever, and astonishingly, he was convinced that he was going to be the one to do it. With this in mind, he entered medical school and engineered an assignment as a physician in the Dutch East Indies, for it was there his research told him the missing link would most likely be found. Shipman's account of the prospecting years is exciting. Dubois took his family to the islands, he survived cave-ins, malaria, and government neglect, and he identified thousands of mammalian fossils, including in 1891 a molar, skull, and thigh-bone of the missing link. His Java Man (which he classified as _Pithecanthropus erectus_) had a small brain, a flat forehead, and a leg made for upright walking. To Shipman's credit, she illuminates well the sadder aspects of the man and his subsequent story with equal detail. Dubois was brilliant and tenacious, but he experienced real betrayals in his scientific life that consumed him. He had a lifetime that was hard enough. His beloved father died while Dubois was prospecting in Java, and never learned of Dubois's spectacular success. When Dubois brought the specimens home, the reaction of his mother was, "But, boy, what use is it?" As the finder of the first link between humans and non-human ancestors, Dubois was necessarily the lightning rod for attacks from the clergy and the public. Also, the old-guard scientists who had not accepted evolution found or imagined reasons to disagree with Dubois's discoveries. He felt himself so ill-treated that he locked up his fabulous specimens for decades, provoking an international scientific protest when he would let no one else examine them.

Shipman has written about evolutionary subjects before, most notably _Taking Wing_, an excellent book about the evolution of bird flight. She has had access to Dubois's personal archives which no one previously had examined. She has produced a remarkably interesting volume about an extraordinary individual with huge flaws and huge capabilities. He was, after all, the father of paleoanthropology. The story of Dubois's boldly making good on a boyhood promise to himself to find the missing link is inspiring, and if he continues to be an underestimated figure in evolutionary histories, it will be despite this dramatic biography.

Rating:
Summary: Annoying style
Review: I confess I ended up first skimming the last half of this book, then several weeks later going back and reading the last chapter and dipping in various other places, so I possibily have not read the whole book, which is extremely unusual for me. But like some other reviewers, I found the style - especially the present tense - awfully annoying and tedious. It also seemed halfway between historical fiction and scientific biography, with all the reconstructed (or imagained?) conversations and thoughts; and you can't which are which. The extensive documentation endnotes indicate that some of these reconstructions are based on letters, etc., but there's no way to tell, and much of it seems just too far over the edge into historical fiction. I enjoy historic fiction very much, but that's not what I was looking for here, and felt I'd been drawn in under false pretenses. Overall, interesting but a tough slog of a read, even if you're really interested in the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Sepia Toned Portrait Charming
Review: I recommend this book to anyone regardless of her or his interest in human anthropology. Shipman's portal to the science is well written and tinted with full details of family life. A three dimensional portrait of Eugene Dubois that Shipman has deftly produced in the manner of a Masterpiece Theatre episode. This flavors the science so it goes down like dutch chocolate. Now that I'm hooked on the science, I'm tackling her co-authored "Neandertals".

Rating:
Summary: Sepia Toned Portrait Charming
Review: I recommend this book to anyone regardless of her or his interest in human anthropology. Shipman's portal to the science is well written and tinted with full details of family life. A three dimensional portrait of Eugene Dubois that Shipman has deftly produced in the manner of a Masterpiece Theatre episode. This flavors the science so it goes down like dutch chocolate. Now that I'm hooked on the science, I'm tackling her co-authored "Neandertals".

Rating:
Summary: Intruiging but bothersome
Review: I was initially put off by the fly-on-wall narrative style - direct quotations from meetings between friends or lovers and even personal and feelings and motivations being put down as fact. This is intermixed with copies of letters and diary entries that are well noted ... a trend in biography that I have a hard time getting used to.

After several chapters though, I was engaged by the substance of the story and these concerns faded somewhat for me. I also find it a bit unpalatable for a modern biography to gloss over quite so neatly the contributions or the conditions of the native people who were forced labor under colonial rule. These peoples may have little history written down, but it seems odd to not for the modern biographer/historian not to at least acknowlegement the situation.

I agree that the Amazon editor's review that Ms. Shipman is at times "overwrought" in the defense of a rather ghastly but brilliant man. Dubois turned out to be rather visionary in hindsight, but one gets the feeling of some of the other major players being slighted in this re-telling just because they happened to be wrong.

I did enjoy the book though, and I reccommend to anyone with an interest in evolutionary biology and the history of science. For the simple biography lover - my enthusiasm is lukewarm, the material is really only interesting in the context of the greaqt debate (that rages even today) about the origins of the human species. This book provides little context or additional information about that battle and would likely leave the uninitiated reader either confused or wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: Intruiging but bothersome
Review: I was initially put off by the fly-on-wall narrative style - direct quotations from meetings between friends or lovers and even personal and feelings and motivations being put down as fact. This is intermixed with copies of letters and diary entries that are well noted ... a trend in biography that I have a hard time getting used to.

After several chapters though, I was engaged by the substance of the story and these concerns faded somewhat for me. I also find it a bit unpalatable for a modern biography to gloss over quite so neatly the contributions or the conditions of the native people who were forced labor under colonial rule. These peoples may have little history written down, but it seems odd to not for the modern biographer/historian not to at least acknowlegement the situation.

I agree that the Amazon editor's review that Ms. Shipman is at times "overwrought" in the defense of a rather ghastly but brilliant man. Dubois turned out to be rather visionary in hindsight, but one gets the feeling of some of the other major players being slighted in this re-telling just because they happened to be wrong.

I did enjoy the book though, and I reccommend to anyone with an interest in evolutionary biology and the history of science. For the simple biography lover - my enthusiasm is lukewarm, the material is really only interesting in the context of the greaqt debate (that rages even today) about the origins of the human species. This book provides little context or additional information about that battle and would likely leave the uninitiated reader either confused or wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: good to learn more about dubois
Review: Many thanks to Pat Shipman for bringing alive this strange man who lurks around the edges of the story of evolution, jealously hiding his treasure trove of bones. He is one of those characters who always shows up, but you never had a chance to meet.

Just as skilled paleontologists reconstruct long-dead animals from a bone here, a tooth there, Shipman resurrects Dubois from a note here, a letter there. Of course much of this we have to accept on faith: we have no more solid proof that Dubois's behavior in many cases was just as Shipman has recreated it. But without her leaps of judgment, this book would be very dull, very scanty reading. Parts of the book are slow as we examine the ins and outs of old controversies and theories, but this detail is important for us to understand Duboi's character and work. Slog on through, but remember that Dubois was kicking and screaming into his eighties, so the book does go on. Maybe just as well we did not digress into the Taung baby and other contemporary discoveries.

I have read other books by Shipman, so it came as no surprise to me that the book was meticulously researched, informative, and enjoyable to read. However, I hope I never again have to read a book written almost entirely in the present tense. Shipman is a good enough author that she does not have to resort to such a tiresome gimmick to bring immediacy to her scenes.

Professor Shipman, if you are out there in front of the computer screen, please keep typing, I am looking forward to your next book. But please do remember how interesting the tenses of the English language are.

Rating:
Summary: A great story, beautifully told, but with odd balance.
Review: The sentences in this book have been so elegantly crafted that they flowed like a smooth running brook. Since my wife and I like to alternate reading chapters from anthropology adventure stories out loud to each other, we were captivated by the editorial polishing that allowed us to pick up speed with nary a fumble (except for the occasional technical, Dutch or Indonesian words). While we had expected rough and tumble science, we were pleasantly surprised by how much this one was about Eugene Dubois's human relationships and the ups and downs of his feelings. (Perhaps there is a sex difference among biographers that accounts for this.)

The first half of the book describes Dubois's family and friends to the exclusion of much of his science, with somewhat of an opposite imbalance in the second half. For example, early on we gleaned from the occasional aside and bibliography (annoyingly given mostly in Dutch without an English translation) that he wrote several papers and a book on the evolution of the sun as discerned from studying the earth's geology. Unfortunately, the author does not tell her readers how or why he did this, or how much of his time this took up, or even what he hoped these efforts would accomplish for him, though we are told that he was achingly ambitious. Instead we find excruciating details of his relations with his family and friends, and how he traversed the flora and geography of Java. Eventually, he discovered Pithecanthropus erectus, the "missing link" between man and ape.

Later, after Dubois and his family return to the Netherlands, we do get excellent blow-by- blow accounts of the scientific in-fighting as other fossils like Peking Man and other Java men are discovered that cause reinterpretation of his finds and provoke controversy about them (later they are relabeled Homo erectus). By then, despite ourselves, we were hooked on his family relations and so frustrated to suddenly be left hanging about what happened on that front. Shipman tells us how and why Dubois separated from his wife, but not explicitly why they got back together or how they get along after they did. While his children tragically die, or wander off, or or make bad marriages, we get little information about how he does end up with descendants.

Even the scientific story has some inexplicable gaps. The big debate rages over the status of Java Man and Peking Man along with Neanderthal and other finds. Even Piltdown Man takes center stage at one point. But the debates over Taung Child and other discoveries in Africa are never mentioned. Did I miss something? We both came away feeling that the book got too long and instead of editing it down, section by section, a production decision was made to simply delete some of the chapters!

Despite these glitches I learned a lot from this book. Dubois did more than find a great fossil. He wrote a great deal on encephalization quotients (i.e., the ratios of brain size to expected body size) anticipating much current work in the evolution of the brain. He also put forward daring alternatives to Darwinian gradualism, like saltations that occur in brain size and so create new species. He has major triumphs and tribulations, and then triumphs again. And most of all, The Man Who Found the Missing Link illustrates the old adage that a man's greatest strengths are also his greatest weaknesses. The independent, bold, ambitious tenacity of the younger Dubois that enabled him to abandon an early professorship to seek his fortune in Java, renders him a needlessly arrogant, stubborn, recalcitrant scientist and lonely man in his later age.