The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Rating:
Summary: His Magnum Opus
Review: A lifetime of clear and concise thinking comes to full fruition in Stephen Gould's "Structure Of Evolutionary Theory", a work which masters the intricacy and vast scale of biological evolution with a prose that would be the envy of the harshest english composition teacher. Indeed, in an age of literarily skilled scientific giants such as Edward Wilson and Richard Dawkins, to name but two, Gould has succeeded in giving his readers a book which will go down in the history of scholarship as one of the truly clarifying perspectives on a theory that has consistently proven itself to be the only unifying principle of life on earth.

While some readers might be intimidated by the sheer massiveness of this book, as well as by Gould's extensive use of technically oriented terminology, they will ultimately be rewarded in their struggle by coming away with a sure-footed understanding of why Darwin's essential theory has stood the test of time and survived to reap the status that all theories aspire to: the ability to consistently explain and predict phenomena, which is the defining trait of any theory's true power. While it may be that many will still dispute Gould's "puncuated equilibria" explanation of speciation, as compared to the school of gradualism, that should not be taken as a sign of any real chink in the armor of basic Darwinism, but rather a sign that the study of evolution is still healthy and vibrant with respect to the intellectually arguable nuance and tempo by which genetic mutation and natural selection produced past and present life.

Gould's book highlights this debate and succeeds in throwing into high relief the cutting edge of both contemporary arguments and the burgeoning empirical research used to bolster or temper them. Whether you buy into his specific interpretations of it or not, the fullness of your understanding of the body of evolutionary knowledge will benefit greatly by a cover to cover reading of his book.

In conclusion I would say that both the scientific community and the reading public owe a debt of gratitude to a figure such as Gould who, after having played a significant role in reviving the essay as a form of written communication, has done an equally excellent job with respect to tackling its polar opposite with an enormous 1400 page treatise that is sure to entice, entertain, and help educate the next generation of critical thinkers.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting book....but long-winded and bloated
Review: As a non-biologist I found this book tough to read. First, at nearly 1,400 pages the book suffers from a complete lack of editing or even clear sense of organization. SET does not really flow, but, rather, vomits forth sections and subsections in an unending torrent of seemingly ill-planned and overly huge chapters. Second, the book was filled with duplication, uneeded "I'm-so-smart" self-congratulation, and varied in how readable it was. It often went from being a broad conceputal overview focusing on clear theoretical argumentation -- the justification for species-level selection, for instance -- to (me at least) mind-numbing excursions into jargon-filled technical studies. The result was that Gould ended up writing a book ill suited for laymen or experts in the field -- a mish-mash resulting from writing for too broad an audience.

On the plus side, there is a hell of a lot of stuff in there. I feel I now have a fairly good grasp, for an interested layman, of evolutionary theory, especially the drawbacks of "conventional" Darwinian natural selection, and how Gould's suggested theoretical "fixes" -- punctuated equilibrium, hierarchical selection, and species selection -- improves upon Darwin. The deep historical detail Gould goes into when discussing the history of Darwinian thought is also nice, especially for an outsider with little knowledge of evolutionary theory. I also enjoyed Gould's take on "Galton's Polyhedron", explanation of "spandrels", and the connection he draws between structural constraint and selective forces -- concepts I can use when thinking about outcomes in my field, the social sciences.

On the whole, I would say SET is very rich in detail, informaton, and explanation, but gets low marks for exposition. The book could clearly benefit from further editing which is why I give it only 3 stars.

Rating:
Summary: More of the same
Review: Gould is famous for his writings in Natural History Magazine, and he has many volumes of reprints. Over the 25 years of producing these volumes his style has changed. Originally, he 'taught' evolution, including the enormously valuable historical perspective that simply was not available elsewhere. It was wonderful reading. Gould really shines here.

But over time his style changed; his articles spent more and more column inches trying to demonstrate that his personal ideas in evolutionary theory must be true since he could find so many examples in other fields of human endeavor. Architecture is a favorite. It's not that architecture isn't interesting; I even think spandrels are interesting mathematically, too. The structural origins of spandrels really doesn't contribute as much to evolutionary thought as the presentation would suggest. His recent writing simply go too far out of the way to demonstrate that he can take any field of human knowledge (those in which he has an interest, and numerous they are) and find some connection with evolution. But, as a friend of mine says, "The juice isn't worth the squeeze."

Gould's 'big idea' has been Punctuated Equilibrium. It is an insightful view of the evolutionary record, and an important contribution to the field. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the idea of Population Thinking; how to view the world through the eyes of a biologist.

I think Gould wasn't very happy with the modest reception his big idea received. Many of his later publications, along with those of Eldredge, were more pleading than persuasive. It was A big idea, but not THE big idea. It was not a revolution in evolutionary theory; it is consistent with the modern synthesis.

Gould opens this book by telling us that it, too, is 'one long argument', as Darwin referred to his own "Origin of Species". It is also the title of a recent book by Ernst Mayr. This is an on-going, perhaps unconscious, effort of Gould's to be more Mayr-like in his writing. In many ways "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" is an attempt to replicate Mayr's "Growth of Biological Thought" and "Towards a New Philosophy of Biology".

In fact, this book begins with almost one hundred pages that seem to be a book within the book; I think Gould finished his 'big book' early and then felt compelled to write an 80 page 'paperback' introduction to it. Feel free to skip these and go right to the meat. Still, the meat is tough.

Reading Gould, the prose always seemed to get in the way of the content. TO a great extent, it still does. If you put in the effort, you will find some great ideas to think about.

Rating:
Summary: The most important book on evolutionary theory since Darwin
Review: Gould's Structure must surely rank as one of the most important contributions to evolutionary theory since the publication of Origin of Species. In brief, this massive book consists of two parts, the first being an extensive historical review of theories of evolution beginning even before Darwin and extending up to the Modern Synthesis in the 1960s, and the second a critique of key elements in evolutionary theory as formulated by Darwin and codified in the Modern Synthesis. Theoretical controversies introduced in the historical section are shown to persist even in today's discussions. Incidentally, in the first chapter there is a 40 page "abstract" which is an excellent chapter by chapter summary of the book's major points.
Some of the key Darwinian conceptions and Gould's counterproposals are as follows:
1) Darwin: natural selection at the level of the individual organism is the sole, or at least by far the most important, contributor to evolution.
Gould: There is a hierarchy of natural selection, with selection at the species level, not the organismal level, as the most important for macroevolution.
2) Darwin: natural selection operating on (hereditable)variation is by far the most dominant factor in causing evolution.
Gould: constraints on hereditable variation imposed by developmental mechanisms play a very important evolutionary role (this is where Gould gives a superb discussion of some of the recent advances in evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") integrated into evolutionary theory.)
3) Darwin: Gradual transformation over geological time spans leads to the development of new species.
Gould: In fact, the paleontological evidence is that the vast majority of species develop with great rapidity (in geological terms) and then remain stable before extinction and/or replacement by a new species (punctuated equilibrium). Additionally, global catastrophic events such as the meteorite hit at the end of the Cretaceous era cause massive, sudden, and unpredictable changes in evolution.
I really can't praise this book highly enough. Yes it is long, but Gould's keen analytic abilities and his penchant for introducing interesting analogies (such as spandrels, and their classification into "franklins" and "miltons") kept my attention throughout. This is not a conventional "textbook" of evolution; you won't find here a systematic survey of how and when various different animal groups evolved. But it is an absolutely masterful survey of the theory behind evolution, buttressed by numerous in-depth examples. However, I would strongly suggest to those without much of a background in these matters reading an introductory book like Carl Zimmer's Evolution before attempting to tackle Structure.

Rating:
Summary: Gould fails to get out of his own way
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with the review by "A reader from Vic, Australia." This book is a classic example of what happens when an author gets too big for his editor. The notion that he even had one must be taken as a matter of blind faith, as there is no empirical evidence for it.

Gould might well have had something important to say in this book; certainly, that was my hope when I bought it. Unfortunately, however, he was too busy stringing together endless chains of metaphors and inventing analogies -- many of which are dead ends -- to tell us what it was.

Rating:
Summary: For hardcore enthusiasts only
Review: I am always interested in finding Nietzsche's name in the index of any book that is highly intellectual, and the first instance in THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY by Stephen Jay Gould must be "adaptation. . . . Nietzsche and, 1217-1218" just before "adaptation at the edge of chaos" on page 1393. This is an example of Nietzsche imagining intellectual traditions as being as undirected as a chain of individual organisms which exhibit changes, "the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random." (p. 1217). The tradition is pictured as the range of contrasts that "more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing." (p. 1217). Nietzsche's use of historical method to emphasize a range of stages also fits Gould's "principle of quirky functional shift" on page 1231. A fuller explanation later shows up:

"The key to this expansion of evolutionary theory therefore lies in the category of currently useful traits with nonadaptive origins--my rationale for prefacing this topic with two sections to develop the prerequisites of the argument: one on Nietzsche's principle of general discordance between bases of current utility and reasons for historical origin, and another on the terminology of exaptation as a framework for describing and appreciating the importance of currently useful structures coopted from a different ancestral status, rather than directly evolved for their present function." (p. 1248).

"SECONDARY AND CONSEQUENTIAL STATUS. This common argument commits the historical error that inspired Nietzsche's warning." (p. 1249).

"Purely adaptationist analysis therefore cannot resolve history for two major reasons:
1. Through the principle of quirky functional shift, and Nietzsche's discordance between reasons for current utility and sources of historical origin, our understanding of how a current trait works cannot elucidate its mode of origin--an ineluctably and logically central task of evolutionary explanation, and one of the most interesting questions that any historical science can pose." (p. 1258).

This is fine as far as consideration of particular arguments goes, but it hardly brings out Nietzsche's foreboding that any future is still up for grabs among people who are willing to do anything if they think it will help them jump to the right conclusion. As individuals within discrete communities, a paying relationship with a major part of the global economic structure is subject to as much competition as cooperation, and everyone might not be better off every time the poorest workers win their right to some compensation. The parallel between political economy and evolution becomes perverse when Nietzsche's prediction of some great wars, which could still be on the horizon, is added to the mix.

This is a big book. Adapting to its terminology might be as big an obstacle as its size for the general reader.

Rating:
Summary: Needs a sympathetic rewrite or at least an editor
Review: I do not recommend you read this book unless you are an academic in the field and need to do so. Although I am unsympathetic with many of the ideas in it, the primary reason for my low rating is that the book was overlong and poorly written where it matters.

I'll start with what I liked about the book. The first chapters were on the history of evolutionary theory, and it is here where Gould's principal strength as a popularizer comes through well. Although these chapters could have been more concise, and they were oriented towards backing Gould's ideas, I enjoyed them for the most part. The last chapters in the modern theory section on the importance of constraint were interesting, though they suffered heavily from Gould's style of discourse. I found the last pages of the book on the importance of contingency to be quite beautiful.

The bulk of the book consisted of the material on punctuated equilibrium and Gould's hierarchy of Darwinian individuals. I had issues with the ideas themselves, but these are a distant second to what I felt about Gould's notion of an argument. Evolutionary biology is not a branch of philosophy and textual analysis should not, as Gould claims, "be pursued more often in scientific discussion." They are not done so, according to him, because of the "philistinistic culture of science." Molecular biology and mathematics are vital components of evolutionary biology, as much and perhaps more so than the incomplete fossil record. Gould gave lip service to molecular biology and much less respect to the now venerable and important discipline of population genetics - except of course when the results from these fields backed up his narrative.

Gould's use of lawyerly argument, where verdict is truth, is the reason why he is rightfully disdained for opening the door to creation "science" in the debate on teaching evolution in schools. By stripping away hard science, and replacing it with metaphors, cartoons, and narratives, Gould took a rigorous theory, based firmly on empirical and deductive facts, and replaced it with a secular creation myth that is open to attack. Although this has made him the darling of what he calls the "literati", it is also what made him a bad scientist. The fact that he addressed modern Darwinism tangentially, chose instead to focus on Darwin's and others Victorian era writings, and rejected ideas because they didn't "feel right," didn't improve his standing with me.

Gould's writing when it came to the science under debate was a nightmare. Intentionally or not, he constructed a complex hierarchy of nested, irrelevant tangents; tangents that were fragments within sentences, which were then tangents within paragraphs, which were in turn tangents within sections, ad nauseam. One of the most frustrating aspects of the book was that he refused to give a clear definition of what he meant by "punctuated equilibrium" until pg 1001: "We locate any revisionary status for punctuated equilibrium in its suggestions about the nature of stasis, and particularly its implications for attributing macroevolutionary phenomena to causes operating on the differential success of species treated as Darwinian individuals. Ordinary speciation remains fully adequate to explain the causes and phenomenology of punctuation." Others, such as Richard Dawkins, have done much on addressing this definition of punctuated equilibrium. My comment here is that it took so long to come to it, and up until this point Gould hinted at saltationist underpinnings to punctuated equilibrium, only to later decry and impugn the integrity of his critics for criticizing these alternative definitions.

My main intellectual criticism was of Gould's hierarchy of Darwinian individuals. I thought this was fine as a phenomenological tool to describe macroevolutionary events, but Gould inverted cause and phenomena to claim that species selection is irreducible to gene or organism selection. His reason why? "Nonlinearities." Along with not knowing what the word "fractal" means, which he used quite a bit to mean either "self-similar" or "scales up", Gould thought "nonlinear" meant "hopelessly complex." His style of argument? Keep repeating the word irreducible until the reader breaks down. Gould was snidely dismissive towards the results of population genetics, but only addressed them directly in a (relatively) brief two page discussion where he claimed that they had to be invalid because population genetics models were able to explain both punctuated equilibrium (stasis followed by rapid change) and his cartoon notion of Victorian gradualism. Since Gould himself was clear that both are evident in the fossil record, it is strength, not a weakness, of a modeling system to be able to explain both.

Although the ideas in the book did not all resonate with me, I would have recommended it if it was more clear and much, much more concise, since the ideas in it are an important part of the current discussion on evolutionary theory. But because of the poor writing in the important scientific parts of the book, and Gould's often unprofessional comments towards critics, I don't think this behemoth of a tome is worth your time.


Rating:
Summary: Pathetic
Review: I'm a fan of Gould. I've read nearly all of his books that were collections of his monthly articles in Natural History magazine. I like his style and topics.

However, "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" (TSET) is not a good book.

First, it is very poorly written. We know Gould can write plainly and clearly, since most of his Natural History books are plain and clear. But the sentences in TSET are overly convoluted. It is obvious that he has fallen victim to PhD-ese, whereby the author tries to impress his peers with verbosity and complexity. "Gee, if I (the reader) cant understand it, it must be a really advanced concept!" is what Gould is shooting for.

Second, sadly, he spends a large part of the book defending his theory of Punctuated Equilibrium against attacks from its detractors. Gould sounds very defensive in these chapters. He takes the attacks on his pet theory way too personally. He even accuses the attackers of being jealous. This kind of childish petulance is not suitable for a book that is ostensibly a serious academic tome. Sure, punctuated equilibrium is an okay concept, but let it speak for itself. Let it get judged in the area of ideas. But dont spend hundreds of pages begging for it to be accepted.

Third, the book does not cleary summarize major evolutionary theories. Although he does touch on major evolutionary concepts, he does so in prose only. This is science, so I expect numbers, charts, figures, tables. A picture is worth a thousand words, but there are very, very few pictures in this thousand page book.

In summary, it appears that Gould is trying to establish a legacy as a serious and important scientist. Unfortunately, he appears to suffer from some kind of inferiority syndrome: he is afraid that history will record him as "merely" journalist that had a gift for explaining science to the layman. The sad thing is that his popular layman books are outstanding, and he did not need to write TSET to secure his respect in my mind.


Rating:
Summary: More on TSET
Review: I've been living with this book for a few weeks now. It's big, so it is the sort of book that becomes part of your life for a while if you stick with it, like a piece of furniture (it's certainly big enough to be one).

Anyhow, wanted to report back on a few things: First, on the writing--there are places where TSET needed a stronger editor, most particluarly at the beginning when Gould runs through his philosphical and categorical underpinnings. Here he's rather unnecessarily Germanic, I'd say. And there are times over course of the book where Gould drifts back into this mode: very long, complex sentences that could have easily been pared back in the service of both clarity and readability.

But these are exceptions over the course of a 1400-page book: for the most part Gould gives us his usual engaging, clear, sometimes colorful prose.

Another reviewer remarked the fact that sociobiology wasn't in the index. Niether is evolutionary psychology, but both of these things are talked about, both directly and indirectly. It isn't that Gould is playing "selective history" so much as that the Index is woefully inadequate for a work of this size and complexity.

Complex? Well, aside from the technical nature of much of the book, there is also a fair amount of organizational drift at the micro level. At the macro level the book is pretty effectively divided into logical sections, but within sections Gould tends to digress and return to pages-back points quite a bit. And a lot of the book is NOT really systematically presented. Rather Gould has a few assays (or essays) at a topic from different angles of attack. There is definitely a recognizable "view of life" behind these different sections, and the method works pretty well, really, as exposition, but . . . this sort of discursive style makes a good index an absolute necessity.

There's one chapter that has come in for a bit of criticism, a defense of Gould's theroy of Punctuated Equilibrium with asides on personal jealousy and other things driving his critics.

Self-serving? Yes! But interesting and enlightening, as well, putting the ball pretty solidly in the court of Gould critics.

There are garcious moments as well: his treatment of Dawkins's Selfish Gene theory is generally pretty open-minded, as is his parting exhortation to the budding field of evolutionary psychology.

If you are interested in this field, this is a book you ought to peruse extensively.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: In Biological Anthropology, my field, people are sometimes interested as to why Gould was so popular. His contributions, such as the Punctuated Equilibria, were more questions, than answers to questions. The truth is, Gould is popular because he is an interesting writer, and unlike some contemporary pop scientists, understands that there are limits to Modern Synthesis. He understands that natural selection is not the only way the evolution progresses. For example, if the current Modern Synthesis was complete, it would NOT be contradictory to what we find in the archeological record. He understands random mutation and THEN natural selection can't explain the archeological record (and Gould knows his statistics as well).

Unfortunately, Gould has never come up with alternative mechanisms. However, other scientists are working busily on it. The fact that Gould understands the limitations of Modern Synthesis makes the book a very important read. Evolution is itself a constantly evolving theory. The truth is, in light of morphology, complexity theory, and even the possibility of bacteria swarming in space, ours is not a finished model. BUT, what we DO know, Gould explains in a thorough way. Gould's training in Paleontology is particularly beneficial. While genetics still struggles with the most basic questions (and while it continues to suffer further setbacks with, for example, the Human Genome findings of 2001 and elementary math equation problems), paleontology is a developed historical science. It gives us good evidence, even if it does not explain the mechanism. Gould has done well. While I still recommend a well-researched and peer reviewed textbook that sheds light on every part of Modern Synthesis (and which gives glimpses in the frontiers of evolutionary theory), I understand that this book needs absolutely NO prior knowledge, and is also immensely readable. Recommended.