The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

Rating:
Summary: Great fun
Review: What Carl Sagan is to astronomy, Stephen Jay Gould is to biology. Both men can write about their subjects fascinatingly and in layman's terms without dumbing down the material. That said, Gould is more down-to-earth, with a sense of humor that is more uplifting than caustic. In "Bathybius and Eozoon" (no, that's not a comic book duo) and "Crazy Old Randolph Kirkpatrick," he takes a look back at two of science's more oddball mistakes while reminding us that scientists are more human than shallow stereotypes might allow. "The Great Scablands Debate" questions the widely-held notion that all geological (and, by extension, evolutionary) change happens at a snail's pace. In "Women's Brains" and "Dr. Down's Syndrome," he questions some of the uses to which science has been put in the past, while not (unlike certain feminists who should know better) discarding the whole idea of science altogether. There are even essays on the (supposed) stupidity of dinosaurs and on Mickey Mouse, which might make excellent reading for a child with good reading skills and an incipient interest in science.

Rating:
Summary: That's my story and I'm sticking to it
Review: When it comes to evolution, the interesting "leit-motiv" of Stephen Jay Gould seems to be: "I ain't got a witness, and I can't prove it, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it". By repeating and recycling the mantra of Charles Darwin again and again, Stephen Jay Gould keeps convincing himself and others that evolution gives the final account of all that is. Of course he couldn't be further from the truth. This point is clearly made by man like William Dembski, Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe, among others, whose books are available and are much more promising than Stephen Jay Gould's. This Harvard Professor takes the same view of Occam's razor as Richard Dawkins: "as long as we can speculate freely about natural causes of all there is, we will keep ignoring all evidence of intelligent design, no matter how strong, even if that requires engaging in scientific acrobatics". Stephen Jay Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" is just an example of such acrobatics. This theory came as response to the huge problems that darwinism faces, and to the fact that many darwinists are coming to the conclusion that they have been "climbing mount impossible" in their quest to explain life with the tools of chance and necessity, leaving intelligence, information and design aside. Of course to some darwinists, these huge problems are just minor detais that their own "naturalism of the gaps" can quickly fix and hold together. But the equilibrium is getting harder and harder to maintain. This is the man who knows well that the lack of correspondence between the fossil record and the theory of evolution is the trade secret of paleontologists. It is true that Stephen Jay Gould has a problem with darwinian mechanism of matter, mutations and selection. He also seems to have a problem with The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins autobiography). How can this mechanism explain the huge amounts of information generation that are needed in the evolutionary process? How can it explain the mythological prebiotic soup? How can this mechanism account for being and matter in the first place? What about the Cambrian explosion? What about the "black holes" in the fossil record? This mechanism is not even adequate to legitimate extrapolations from micro to macroevolution? Stephen Jay Gould seems to realize that the only way for science to evolve is to criticize the theory of evolution. Still he sticks to his story, presenting the thumb of the Panda as evidence against design. If he is right, then the tower of Piza wasn't designed either. Of course Stephen Jay Gould and all the scientists together are not able to design a Panda, but that is just another detail.