About book Leonardo's Mountain Of Clams And The Diet Of Worms: Essays On Natural History (1999)
I started reading Natural History magazine several years ago, because I loved the essays of Stephen Jay Gould that appeared in each monthly issue; each essay had something to do with evolution (with Charles Darwin’s name invoked regularly), and were quite entertaining reading, along with being educational. Alas, Gould died in 2002; but his Natural History magazine essays have been collected in several books, of which this present book is the eighth or ninth (I lost count, and the book does not say). And, for those reading this on my weblog who do not wish to read further, I very much enjoyed the book.As noted, each essay deals with evolution (Gould was for it, by the way). Aside from that focus, the essays cast a wide net, from Leonardo da Vinci to Percival Lowell, from sloths to vultures, from Lewis Carroll to Pope John Paul II, and from Christopher Columbus to the Defenestration of Prague. Gould had a wicked sense of humor, and a genius for writing essays that were entertaining.In the course of the present book, one learns that if Christopher Columbus had thought to put one of the shells on the beach in his pocket when he touched land on October 12, 1492 that one could determine without a doubt which island in the Bahamas he actually landed on (as the shells are quite specific to each island), that Percival Lowell decided that intelligent beings had canals on Mars because he thought he saw plant life through his microscope (he reasoned that plant life meant animals, that animals must mean sentient beings, that these sentient beings had to be on a higher scale than us, and that the beings had constructed a canal system to get the water from the Mars ice caps to the plant life), and that the Pope’s announcement some years back that evolution was a licit belief for the faithful was news because a previous Pope had said that evolution was licit, but that it was one hypothesis among many (and God willing, the scientists would find another, better, theory).Gould was at some pains to point out that the current conceptions of evolution as held by the popular mind were in many ways incorrect; mankind is not the natural culmination of evolution, and evolution does not mean an inevitable progress from dumb to smarter. He also enjoyed, in these essays, showing how the by-ways of scientific enquiry can shed light on issues, even if the by-ways led to apparent dead ends.I have read all of the previous collections of Natural History magazine essays, and I am very happy that this one will go on the shelf next to all of the other collections.
This has been on my shelf for a long time - it's just always felt too hefty to delve into. I don't know what I was afraid of - Stephen Jay Gould is a very accessible writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book. I knew little about the topics covered in this book, except for some sketchy background about Darwin, Da Vinci and defenestration(!) Gould brings his erudition and wide knowledge of more than just science to bear on each topic, expounding and expanding in equal measure, building up new perspectives in places and revealing forgotten or unknown details in others. I've read in other reviews that some of his earlier collections of essays are superior and will be keeping an eye out for them.
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It was fascinating to read about how Leonardo's remarkable powers of observation enabled him to see the falsity of the story of Noah's flood. Now what's wrong with people today who still believe in such mythological nonsense. I saw Stephen Jay Gould speak a few weeks before he died, and he knew he was dying. He never told the audience. After the lecture, I wondered why he didn't tell more jokes because I love his sense of humor. Perhaps that is why. Instead he used the time to speak up for the diversity of life and its importance. He's a truly great man, and I miss his stories. He would have written so many more.
—Jimmy
this book is probably not the best introduction to the late Stephen Jay Gould's body of work (instead try either: The Flamingo's Smile, Bully for Brontosaurus or Dinosaur in a Haystack), but you simply must read him if you delight in learning more about the world around you and being (classically) entertained at the same time.These various anthologies of his Essays written for the American Natural History magazine over many years are an enduring legacy of an original scientist, a brilliant educator and wonderful, decent man.Dr Gould's essays will make you look and question more about the natural (and man-made) world around you each day and provide insights to help understand the origins and history of the ideas and concepts which have shaped and continue to shape our daily lives.But most of all, I hope you will appreciate the sense of child-like wonderment I did at learning or seeing things previously taken for granted, again, as if for the first time.
—Jim
I enjoy these collections of Natural Science magazine essays by Stephen Jay Gould, but this is not his best one. Of the five I've read so far -- there are 10 altogether -- this is my least favorite. At his best SJG's essays play off a number of seemingly unrelated topics and then slowly, often dazzlingly, he weaves the disparate threads together. He still does that here. And the best essays, "The Diet of Worms and the Defenestration of Prague" and "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" are right up there with his very best. But too often the essays are flat and lacking in the discursive fun that is his hallmark. I intend to read the other five books. But if you're going to read only one let me recommend either Dinosaur in a Haystack or Bully for Brontosaurus. Gould's Wonderful Life, about the Burgess Shale, is brilliant, too, but it's a stand-alone title and not part of the essay series. See my review for each of these.
—William1
