Reflections in Natural History, series

by Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould recently completed Dinosaur In A Haystack, the seventh book of his "Reflections in Natural History" series, which collects in book form the monthly columns Gould writes for Natural History magazine. The first of the series, Ever Since Darwin, was published almost 20 years ago, in 1977. This review, just for fun, covers both books.

The essay that I enjoyed the most in Gould's latest book is about Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who was a naturalist in his own right, and was also a fairly well known poet in his day. It seems that Linnaeus (founder of the modern classification system dividing creatures into kingdom, phylum, class, and so on) was at the time classifying plants based on their sexual organs; in particular, how many stamens and pistils each flower had. This was somewhat controversial:

Professor Johann Siegesbeck of St. Petersburg decreed that God would never have based his natural arrangements on such a "shameful whoredom" -- and Linnaeus responded by naming a small and ugly weed Siegesbeckia in his honor.

So Erasmus Darwin, biologist and fan of Linnaeus's new system, joined the fray, and wrote a poem in advocacy of Linnaeus, using elaborate metaphors of husbands, knights, brides, and damsels to count and describe stamens and pistils:

The freckled Iris owns a fiercer flame,
And three unjealous husbands wed the dame.

Or:

Cupresus dark disdains his dusky bride,
One dome contains them, but two beds divide.

And so on. And on and on, in fact, for nearly 240 pages of heroic couplets! (He does, apparently, wander off into classical Greek and Roman themes quite extensively, but still!)

Gould's first book of essays, Ever Since Darwin, doesn't contain anything quite so literary, but it does have two essays on Erasmus's more famous grandson Charles. The essay I remember most from that book, though, I remember in part for its title: "The Problem of Perfection, or How Can a Clam Mount a Fish on Its Rear End?" This essay is a straightforward explication of natural selection; it uses an example you probably haven't heard of (and includes a striking picture) to discuss a problem you probably have: If something is of no use till it's perfected, how could it evolve through the imperfect stages. This question is commonly posed for eyes and wings, among other things. Gould discusses the general problem in the context of one odd little example, and shows how related species shed some light on the question of intermediate utility.

The story of Erasmus Darwin, and the account of a clam with a fish decoy attached, represent Gould at his best. He takes a detail or fact that is curious and interesting in its own right, tells its story, and uses it to explain a more general theme or idea. Indeed, the strongest essays frequently use one example to make several points. The title essay of Dinosaur in a Haystack, for example, explains the Alvarez comet theory of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, and at the same time points out how that theory changed the way paleontologists searched for fossils, arguing that science is not the gradual accumulation of facts that many of us conceive. Gould made the same point in Ever Since Darwin, in an essay explaining continental drift:

Facts do not "speak for themselves"; they are read in the light of theory...

Both examples [glaciation and fossil distribution] are widely cited as "proofs" of drift today, but they were soundly rejected in previous years, not because their data were any less complete but only because no one had devised an adequate mechanism to move continents.

This idea that science is not quite the holy temple of a steady progression of objective fact that we sometimes imagine it to be is a favorite them of Gould's. He reiterates the point in many ways, and applies it in both books to his own pet peeve of sociobiology. In Ever Since Darwin, for example, the essay "The Non-science of Human Nature" argues:

Science is always influenced by society, but it operates under a strong constraint of fact as well... In studying the genetic components of such complex human traits as intelligence and agressiveness, however, we are freed from the constraint of fact, for we know practically nothing.

And in Dinosaur In A Haystack, Gould has several essays discussing past scientific misjudgments, from a scientist who thought that the upper classes were physically less fertile, to the Nazis' appropriation of natural selection in justifying their horrors.

Gould's writing has changed, not surprisingly, in the 20 or so years he has been publishing his columns. Ever Since Darwin is a fairly concise 270 pages; Dinosaur In a Haystack runs about 450 pages. The number of essays in each book is about the same, but they have increased in length, from 6 or 8 pages per essay in the early book, to 10 or 14 pages in the more recent. Some content has been added, but so have some ornate introductions. It's a question of style, of course, and some people may like the way Gould draws connections among random things:

I can't imagine two people in more intimate contact - just the tiniest sliver of a millimeter's separation - than the figures on the front and back of a banknote.

This essay ties together Linnaeus and King Gustav III, who apparently share a Swedish banknote. But its main point is about Linnaeus, and the introduction wanders through 2 pages, touching on a Verdi opera, before we get there. This may be fine in a monthly magazine; I found it a touch long-winded in a book. Gould's subject matter has broadened, as well, and he's now as likely to write on literature as he is on paleontology, though evolution remains a fairly constant theme in almost every essay.

On the whole, though, Gould remains a joy to read. He has been called the evolutionist-laureate of our time, with more than a little justification. If you're going to pick up only one of his books, I'd recommend one of the earlier ones, but I think the books are like the essays - pick and choose, skip randomly among them, and at almost every stop you will learn and enjoy.

© 1996, Greg Tillman.

latest update: May 30, 2001
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