The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals

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Summary: Five-eyed arthropods.
Review: A reviewer of this book explains that Opabinia could not possibly be related to the arthropods, because it has five eyes. This most erudite person seems to ignore that many present-day arthropods have, in fact, five eyes. They are called insects! Many insects have two composite eyes and three small simple eyes. Now 2+3=5, so many insects, like the cicada, etc. do have five eyes. Since insects are arthropods, five-eyed arthropods are not unheard of, and are in fact very common.

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Summary: From a Reader in Sanibel Island Florida
Review: I think some of the reviews make far too much about the author's comments about Stephen Jay Gould. That these two disagree about certain things is just fine with me and if it gets a little personal at times, so what? Consider that just a little spice in the dish. What is wonderful about this book is its concise expression of ideas and concepts and its use of apt illustrations to help us understand the points it makes. Simon Conway Morris obviously cares very deeply about the subject of the book and his skillful writing helps us catch some of that fervor. Whether you end up believe Dr Gould or Dr Conway Morris or make up some other conclusion isn't really the point. You will be better off having read this book (as well as Gould and other authors). This book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the implications of the Burgess Shale and what we believe we are learning from it and other sites. There are many valuable concepts discussed in this book and valuable references to other reading so you can take your investigations as deep as you care to go. If you read this book I believe you will enjoy it and learn from it.

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Summary: A good book but I would preferred more detail.
Review: In this book Conway-Morris makes an interesting argument on the animals of Burguess Shale. But in order to understand it, a previous reading of 'Wonderful Life' by Stephen J. Gould is useful. Not only because Conway-Morris criticizes the argumnent of Gould, and he deny the importance of 'contingency' or of the 'weird wonders' in order to understand evolution and Burguess Shale. The other reason is that the Gould's book is more detailed and informative in his presentation of the animals of Burguess Shale. The lack of detail in the arguments of Conway-Morris damage his case: For example, when Gould wants to show that Anomalocaris is a weird wonder, he makes a detailed presentation of its anatomy, but Conway-Morris only presents a brief sketch of the reasons of why Anomalocaris can be seen as a special kind of arthropod. This is regrettable because the arguments of Conway-Morris benefit from detailed presentation, as in his discussion of Wiwaxia or his presentation of the concept of disparity.

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Summary: A real insider's view of early metazoan paleoecology
Review: Morris presents an excellent overview of the history of the discovery and subsequent work on the Burgess Shale, as well as ideas about the the life and times of early metazoan life. I am glad to see that not everyone agrees with Gould's interpretations of early life -- not that I disagree with Gould, it's just that it's healthy to have multiple informed opinions about the rise of animal diversity. I found the photographs and figures of Burgess Shale and Burgess Shale-like faunas to be top-notch, as are the discussions of other fossil bearing formations that are of the same vintage as the Burgess Shale. This book is a good read for anyone interested in the Cambrian explosion, though I have to admit that the mental imagery of the time-travelling submersible didn't hit the mark for me. Still, this book is well worth one's time.

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Summary: Superb study on the Burgess Shale
Review: Morris, one of two contemporary specialists on the Burgess Shale, has produced an exceedingly well-written survey of the Burgess shale fauna and their meaning for evolutionary biology. The book is loaded with scores of B/W photos, 4 color drawings, a 13-page glossary of terms for the uninitiated, an imaginative underwater excursis with time-travelling paleontologists to the middle Cambrian, and a chapter on developmental evolutionary genetics (wherein he argues that many Burgess forms *are* related to contemporary forms). Stephen Jay Gould's view of the significance of the Burgess Shale is that the bizarre life-forms seen then demonstrate the historical contingency of evolution--rewind the tape and let it play out again, and things would turn out differently (a la Jimmy Stewart's "Wonderful Life"). Morris's thesis is that Gould's tape-player metaphor is misleading, overemphasizing contingency at the cost of ignoring the powerful role played by ecology . One need only consider the evolution of convergent traits in insular life-forms (e.g., Australian marsupial cat-like predators) to get the point. (I should point out that I am suspicious of monolithic theories from either pole of the necessity-chance spectrum.) I find it unfortunate that Gould never discussed Bradley Efron's Bootstrap, a technique used widely in evolutionary and population genetics, or cellular automata, a la Stuart Kauffman, which give rise to the same recurrent patterns with astonishing regularity.) Morris is an adaptationist senstive to the power of ecology to shape evolution, who sees Burgess forms not as deviant freaks that accidentally went extinct but as ancestral to contemporary animals. As usual, there is likely to be truth to both positions; indeed, in some ways, their different views turn on different understandings of probability. For anyone with more than a passing interest in evolutionary biology and paleontology, who finds Gould's incessant digressions distracting, or wonders about the hypertrophy of contingency, this book should not be missed.

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Summary: Engaging
Review: Readers have a choice to consider here; attend a senior evolutionary biology course, or spend an intense bit of time studying Conway Morris' glossary introducing this book. Either way, press on to the text, rich rewards await your persistence. Conway Morris offers a memorable account of assessing the fossil evidence of one of biology's more striking finds. The Burgess Shale's disclosure of fossilized soft-bodied creatures is a captivating story, one which was not, contrary to the views of many, fully resolved by Stephen Gould's account.

So much attention has been given to the grandeur of the dinosaurs, other eras of importance in life's pageant have too often been overlooked. The Cambrian era described so vividly by Conway Morris was a time when evolution's processes were already well under way. His account, partially supporting Walcott's original descriptions, is based on hard, reflective investigation and reassessment of the fossil evidence. Using techniques unavailable in Walcott's day, Conway Morris and his colleagues delicately pieced together a new picture of how the Cambrian life forms looked and how they must have lived. His imaginative use of 'time travel' to depict these creatures is a fine innovation in reporting science. He's to be commended for stimulating thinking about evidence.

While Conway Morris doesn't write with Gould's more florid style, his presentation has presented us with a much more valuable account. Gould spends too much time disparaging Walcott's lack of effort in analyzing the shale. Gould's advocacy of 'contingency' as an evolutionary mechanism supporting his misleading 'punctuated equilibrium' thesis is rightly assaulted by Conway Morris. Conway Morris, by focussing on strong scientific work, demonstrates that flighty contentions cannot replace solid scientific analysis. He provides the reader with a stirring account of the research leading to the reassessment achieved by his team. The result is a solid, highly readable account of the Burgess finds. This book is a fine replacement for the only work we've had available on this topic.

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Summary: Conway Morris (and lots of reviewers of his book). . .
Review: take potshots at Stephen Gould's extended speculation on contingency. This is unfortunate because it is all a waste of words-- "contingency", as used by Gould, cannot be science because it is not possible to devise a test of falsifiability (ref: Karl Popper.) What Gould's book is about is the context of science within its culture--why Walcott made his "big mistake". (If you are possibly wondering if Charles Walcott was some amateur rockhound then disabuse yourself with Ellis Yochelson's recent biography.)

What Simon Conway Morris's book is about is an ecological approach to the Cambrian menagerie.

What *all* the Burgess books are about is a celebration of the most important animals fossils yet discovered. (You get your best look [apart from the museums] with Chip Clark's excellent photographs in Derek Briggs's "Fossils of the Burgess Shale".)

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Summary: By turns engrossing and mildly annoying
Review: This book begins with a rather difficult glossary, then goes on to confront the reader with sentences that have opening clauses such as "Embedded in Spenglerian cyclicity..." The book does lighten up after a while (or perhaps the reader simply becomes accustomed to the style), but at the very least it seems fair to say that Morris doesn't underestimate the intellect of his readers. He has written an interesting book about the Burgess Shale that reviews familiar facts and adds some illuminating new material.

Morris's prose does get out of hand from time to time, making dark hints or arch asides with no explication, leaving the reader thinking "and exactly what would THAT be?" (A case in point is his footnote reference to "the poisonous ideas of such individuals as Derrida." Who? What?)

Still, most of the book is coherent and informative - particularly if you give up on reading the footnotes and stick with the main text.

The book does annoy in its relentless disparaging of Steven J. Gould, not because Morris dares to disagree with the role of punctuated equilibrium and (more importantly) contingency, but because of his condescending and not altogether consistent dismissal of the larger implications that flow from Gould's ideas. In the first chapter, Morris tells us that Gould's "arid manifesto" is "unequivocal. The likelihood of Man evolving on any other planet is extraordinarily unlikely." This is a philosophical criticism because Morris doesn't like what he thinks Gould implies by this. Since Morris never plainly explains, it is hard to be sure, but evidently he feels that Gould's view says that the human race has no larger meaning and needn't take any responsibility for things because we're just a chance, and highly unlikely, event.

Personally, I never took that message from anything written by Gould (he's one of the most engagingly literate humanists I read) but Morris certainly has the credentials to form a knowledgeable opinion otherwise. What annoys is that Morris closes his book with a somewhat intellectually messy essay noting that it is at least statistically possible that humans are unique and therefore we have a special responsibility to our planet. Let me get this straight: if GOULD says humanity is a unique, wondrous event, then Gould is the proponent of some evil, nihilistic philosophy. But if MORRIS says we're unique, it is cause for celebration, humility, and stewardship. Oh well - at least Morris compels you to think, even if you wish his own thoughts were a bit clearer.

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Summary: A much better book on the Burgess Shale fossils than Gould's
Review: This is a very good book on the Burgess Shale fossils, written by one of the people who ACTUALLY did the work that Gould uses in his "Wonderful Life". It shows that Gould's interpretation is biased toward his peculiar view of "Evolution without Progress". It also shows that many of Gould's main arguments are based on simple mistakes, like the upside-down Hallucinogenia. While Gould present a fringe view of evolution, Morris presents the standard neo-Darwinian picture.

He shows that most of the Burgess Shale fossils fit in ordinary phyla, after all. Or are clearly related to ancestors of the present phyla. Mysterious animals like the halkieriids are shown to be intermediate between the annelida and the brachiopoda, while wiwaxia is probably a stem lineage annelid. Just as Darwin would have expected! While some details can still be wrong, the overall picture fits well with ordinary ideas of how evolution works.

It is amusing to see a Christian (Morris) defend orthodox neo-Darwinism against a materialist (Gould). In fact, compared to Morris, Gould looks like a creationist! This book is not just better science than Gould's, it is also better philosophy.

The book is much more than a polemic against Gould. It tells a story of hunting fossils from Greenland to China: a most satisfying story to read. Unfortunately, I am sure than far fewer copies of this informative and up-to-date book have been sold than of the misleading "Wonderful Life". What a pity!