Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin - Hardcover

Gould, Stephen Jay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517703947 ISBN 13: 9780517703946

Publisher: Harmony, 1996

Synopsis

Few would question the truism that humankind is the crowning achievement of evolution; that the defining thrust of life's history yields progress over time from the primitive and simple to the more advanced and complex; that the disappearance of .400 hitting in baseball is a fact to be bemoaned; or that identifying an existing trend can be helpful in making important life decisions. Few, that is, except Stephen Jay Gould who, in his new book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, proves that all of these intuitive truths are, in fact, wrong.

"All of these mistaken beliefs arise out of the same analytical flaw in our reasoning, our Platonic tendency to reduce a broad spectrum to a single, pinpointed essence," says Gould. "This way of thinking allows us to confirm our most ingrained biases that humans are the supreme being on this planet; that all things are inherently driven to become more complex; and that almost any subject can be expressed and understood in terms of an average."

In Full House, Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world (and the history of life) is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation rather than as an isolated "thing" and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this "full house" of variation, and not as the progress or degeneration of an average value, or single thing. When approached in such a way, the disappearance of .400 hitting becomes a cause for celebration, signaling not a decline in greatness but instead an improvement in the overall level of play in baseball; trends become subject to suspicion, and too often, only a tool of those seeking to advance a particular agenda; and the "Age of Man" (a claim rooted in hubris, not in fact) more accurately becomes the "Age of Bacteria."

"The traditional mode of thinking has led us to draw many conclusions that don't make satisfying sense," says Gould. "It tells us that .400 hitting has disappeared because batters have gotten worse, but how can that be true when record performances have improved in almost any athletic activity?" In a personal eureka!, Gould realized that we were looking at the picture backward, and that a simple conceptual inversion would resolve a number of the paradoxes of the conventional view.

While Full House deftly reveals the shortcomings of the popular reasoning we apply to everyday life situations, Gould also explores his beloved realm of natural history as well. Whether debunking the myth of the successful evolution of the horse (he grants that the story still deserves distinction, but as the icon of evolutionary failure); presenting evidence that the vaunted "progress of life" is really random motion away from simple beginnings, not directed impetus toward complexity; or relegating the kingdoms of Animalai and Plantae to their proper positions on the genealogical chart for all of life (as mere twigs on one of the three bushes), Full House asks nothing less than that we reconceptualize our view of life in a fundamental way.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Jay Gould is an internationally renowned evolutionary biologist and best-selling author, equally respected by academic and general interest readers. His books for the general reader include seven collections of essays (written for his monthly column in Natural History magazine, which he has done for over twenty years) and three original nonfiction works. Gould is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard and the Curator for Invertebrate Paleontology in the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.

From the Back Cover

estion the truism that humankind is the crowning achievement of evolution; that the defining thrust of life's history yields progress over time from the primitive and simple to the more advanced and complex; that the disappearance of .400 hitting in baseball is a fact to be bemoaned; or that identifying an existing trend can be helpful in making important life decisions. Few, that is, except Stephen Jay Gould who, in his new book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, proves that all of these intuitive truths are, in fact, wrong.

"All of these mistaken beliefs arise out of the same analytical flaw in our reasoning, our Platonic tendency to reduce a broad spectrum to a single, pinpointed essence," says Gould. "This way of thinking allows us to confirm our most ingrained biases that humans are the supreme being on this planet; that all things are inherently driven to become more complex; and that almost any subject can be expressed and understood in terms

From the Inside Flap

estion the truism that humankind is the crowning achievement of evolution; that the defining thrust of life's history yields progress over time from the primitive and simple to the more advanced and complex; that the disappearance of .400 hitting in baseball is a fact to be bemoaned; or that identifying an existing trend can be helpful in making important life decisions. Few, that is, except Stephen Jay Gould who, in his new book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, proves that all of these intuitive truths are, in fact, wrong. <br><br>"All of these mistaken beliefs arise out of the same analytical flaw in our reasoning, our Platonic tendency to reduce a broad spectrum to a single, pinpointed essence," says Gould. "This way of thinking allows us to confirm our most ingrained biases that humans are the supreme being on this planet; that all things are inherently driven to become more complex; and that almost any subject can be expressed and understood in terms

Reviews

Now hear this: Evolution is not progressive. We (humans) are not the be-all and end-all of nature's plan. You've heard these lines before: They are quintessentially Gould. In this short volume Gould (Dinosaur in a Haystack, 1995, etc.) elaborates on this theme. Among the examples he advances is one that should prove dear to the hearts of baseball fans: Why, Gould asks, are there no .400 hitters anymore? The answer requires looking not at batting but at how the game of baseball has varied over time. There has been a general improvement in play so that the normal curve of batting averages no longer has a tail trailing off to the right where the few .400 stars were to be found. Instead, in Gould's phrase, we have hit a right wall--a boundary reflecting the limits of human performance. A second, longer, and more complex example deals with evolutionary data. If we eliminated human hubris, we would see that it is bacteria that were in the beginning, are now, and ever will be the most populous and successful kingdom--virtually at the left wall boundary in terms of minimally complex organisms capable of life. Over time, there was nothing else for life to do but to expand to the right. However, using fossil records, Gould demonstrates that there was no directionality: Descendants didn't always get more complex--they could just as easily revert to less complex forms. What befuddles the issue is the matter of cultural ``evolution''--a word Gould would strike in favor of the word ``change.'' Cultural inventions (including reading and writing) have enabled great leaps of technical ``progress'' in nanoseconds of time, reckoned by evolutionary standards. As a species, however, we remain an anomalous tail in the full house of life on earth. So we should accept our place with becoming humility. Gould fans will be charmed at the cogency and cleverness of his arguments--but expect a wall of opposition from pious and diehard progressivists. (50 illustrations, not seen) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In his first book-length essay since Wonderful Life (1989), Gould explains two seemingly disparate problems by the same method of analysis. The issues: the disappearance of the .400 hitter in baseball and the notion that biological evolution represents a progression from bacteria to humans. Both phenomena could be more satisfactorily illuminated, Gould feels, if examined in light of Darwin's perception that variety, not distinctiveness, is the theme of life. As a preface to such examination, Gould discusses the interpretation of trends and presents two small case studies--his own experience with a doubtfully treatable cancer and the evolution of horses--in which the consideration of individual variation leads to true conclusions that contradict a central tendency: Gould survived cancer, and the modern horse is evolutionarily a dead end, not an epitome. Finally, Gould tackles his two big cases, in both asking us to take the "full house" of factors into account; that is, the development of all the arts involved in baseball, not just of hitting, and in the matter of evolution, the volume and variety of all species throughout geological time, not just the specializations of vertebrates. So doing, we discover that baseball is better than ever, not that hitters have degenerated, and that progress in evolution is a delusion, for bacteria are now, as they always have been, the real central tendency--the most prolific form of life. Humans constitute a very minor variation in the grand symphony of life, and progress is a cultural, not a scientific, quality. Gould says he has "nurtured" this book, "my adored and wayward boy," for 15 years. If its publication is like the homecoming of the prodigal, go kill the fatted calf. Ray Olson

In his first single-subject book of original writing since Wonderful Life (LJ 9/1/89), Harvard paleontologist Gould examines trends in natural variation throughout organic evolution, thereby discrediting the abstract ideas of eternal forms, fixed essences, and intrinsic progress. His insightful study even applies to sports systems, accounting for the apparent extinction of .400 hitting in baseball. In light of fossil evidence and overwhelming biodiversity, he concludes that there is no linear pattern or ultimate design to evolution. Instead, life is a spreading web or a branching bush; variation, rather than progression, is nature's expression of excellence. Consequently, our species is not the inevitable end-goal of evolution. It remains for Gould to consider in his next book the ethical and theological implications of his nonprogressive and naturalistic world view. (Are bacteria really as important as human beings?) Gould's book is rather a dense read for the average patron, but his ideas are important. Recommended for all academic and public library science collections.
-?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0517703947
• ISBN 13: 9780517703946
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244