The Panda's Thumb More Reflections in Natural History Stephen Jay Gould W W NORTON & COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor. The Panda’s Thumb TPT 1. The Panda’s Thumb This is one of Stephen Jay Gould’s most famous essays. It makes the case that biological. Find more information about: ISBN: 81308198 OCLC Number: 6331415 Description: 343 pages: illustrations; 22 cm Contents: Prologue -- [pt]. Perfection and imperfection: a trilogy on a panda's thumb -- 1. The panda's thumb -- 2. Senseless signs of history -- 3. Double trouble -- [pt. Darwiniana -- 4. Natural selection and the human brain: Darwin vs. Wallace -- 5. Darwin's middle road -- 6. Death before birth, or a mite's nunc dimittis -- 7. Shades of Lamarck -- 8. Caring groups and selfish genes -- [pt]. Human evolution -- 9. A biological homage to Mickey Mouse -- 10. Piltdown revisited -- 11. Our greatest evolutionary step -- 12. In the midst of life -- [pt]. Science and politics of human differences -- 13. Wide hats and narrow minds -- 14. Women's brains -- 15. Down's syndrome -- 16. Flaws in a Victorian veil. The pace of change -- 17. The episodic nature of evolutionary change -- 18. Return of the hopeful monster -- 19. The Great Scablands debate -- 20. A quahog is a quahog -- [pt]. Early life -- 21. An early start -- 22. Crazy old Randolph Kirkpatrick -- 23. Bathybius and Eozoon -- 24. Might we fit inside a sponge's cell -- [pt]. They were despised and rejected -- 25. Were dinosaurs dumb? The telltale wishbone -- 27. Nature's odd couples -- 28. Sticking up for marsupials -- [pt]. Size and time -- 29. Our allotted lifetimes -- 30. Natural attraction: bacteria, the birds and the bees -- 31. Time's vastness -- Bibliography -- Index. Responsibility: Stephen Jay Gould. 'Gould can do no wrong.As long as he writes, you cannot help but read-and enjoy.' -- Isaac Asimov 'Stephen Jay Gould is a serious and gifted interpreter of biological theory, of the history of ideas, and of the cultural context of scientific discovery.The Panda's Thumb is fresh and mind-stretching. Above all, it is exultant. So should its readers be.' Jack Geiger - New York Times Book Review 'It is a wonder what Mr. Gould can do with the most unlikely phenomena: a tiny organism's use of the earth's magnetic field as a guide to food and comfort, for instance, or the panda's thumb-which isn't one.Science writing at its best.' -- The New Yorker Read more. This is the second of Gould's many collections of essays originally written for the magazine 'Natural History.' Gould liked to bring to a popular audience current findings in evolution. He liked to discuss the political implications of science and the influence of politics on science. He had a liberal/left political sensibility that came through in his essays. These essays are still tight and powerful, well-crafted and fun to read.The hallmark essays of this volume are in the first set, including the title essay, The Panda's Thumb. The thesis of this section is that living organisms do not have perfect designs, and it is these imperfections that give evidence of evolution by natural selection. It is a powerful counter-argument against the ancient creationist 'Argument from Design.' In the case of the Panda, bears lost their thumbs in the course of evolutionary history. But Pandas need thumbs. So a thumb-like appendage evolved from the wrist to serve the purpose imperfectly.
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