Light AND THE Behavior OF Organisms

Stephen Jay Gould. Ever Since Darwin: Reflections on Natural History. W. W. Norton, 1992
0393308189 Book Description "A remarkable achievement by any measure?. [Gould] is a writer of great natural wit, and his sophistication and learning range far beyond?biology."?Chicago Tribune Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all of Gould's succeeding collections, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights. Its genius? Gould's ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate science. 15 illustrations. About the Author Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), a professor of science at Harvard University, was the author of more than twenty books. He received the National Book Award for Wonderful Life and the National Book Critics Circle award for The Mismeasure of Man. November 20, 1977 The History of a Theory By JAMES GORMAN EVER SINCE DARWIN Reflections in Natural History By Stephen Jay Gould. ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY By Stephen Jay Gould. Science is not organized common sense, according to Stephen Jay Gould, the young Harvard biologist and paleontologist who writes the monthly column "This View of Life" in Natural History Magazine. "At its most exciting," he writes "[science] reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition . . . Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is not a creative human activity." In Gould's two new books, "Ever Since Darwin" a collection of his magazine columns, and "Ontogeny and Phylogeny" a scholarly study of the theory of recapitulation, he not only explains scientific theory but comments on science itself, with clarity and wit, simultaneously entertaining and teaching. His essays "range broadly from planetary and geological to social and political history, but they are united . . . by the common thread of evolutionary theory." He writes, wryly: "I am a tradesman not a polymath; why I know of planets and politics lies at their intersection with biological evolution." His examples are delights. "The best illustrations of adaptation by evolution are the ones that strike our intuition as peculiar or bizarre," notes Gould. He asks us to consider the gull midge. These tiny flies, which feed primarily on mushrooms, reproduce in a peculiar fashion when food is abundant. The young, created without aid of a father, grow in the mother's body by feeding on her flesh. When they have finished consuming their only parent they emerge, leaving a hollow shell behind. Within two days their own children are beginning to feed at the maternal trough. At first glance, suggests Gould, such ravenous matricide, even among bugs, may disgust us. But seen in the light of evolutionary theory, the behavior emerges as efficient and adaptive. It allows the flies to reproduce quickly when food is plentiful, reaching numbers large enough to insure that some survive when food is scarce. Introduced to a commercial mushroom bed, in five weeks gall midges can reach a density of 20,000 insects per square foot. Or another case: About 600 million years ago, in the "Cambrian explosion," single-celled bacteria and blue-green algae blossomed into a wide variety of marine life. The best explanation for this explosion, according to Gould, has come not from an accumulation of new facts, but from a new idea -- that a "cropper," an organism that eats other organisms, promotes diversity. The cropper feeds on the dominant species, preventing them from crowding out new arrivals. Perhaps, the explanation goes, life exploded after the first cropper ignited the fuse by feasting on algae that had been growing free for two and a half billion years. Gould not only celebrates the human imagination in science, he also insists we recognize the social and cultural influences on that imagination. At their best, new theories free us from our prejudices; at their worst, they support the biases of their creators. The danger is amply illustrated in the history of the attempts to find parallels between ontogeny (individual development) and phylogeny (evolutionary history) -- a subject he deals with in several essays in "Ever Since Darwin" and tackles at great length in "Ontogeny and Phylogeny." In one form or another, the idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" has exerted its force since antiquity. At the peak of its influence, in the latter half of the 19th century, belief in recapitulation was the dominant viewpoint in evolutionary biology. Organisms were thought to replay their evolution in their embryonic growth, so that one could read in the development of a fetus the history of its lineage. Thus, a human fetus would initially resemble an ancestral single-celled organism. At a later stage its embryonic gill slits would recall a piscine forebear, a later step in evolution. It would then progress through the reptiles, birds and lower mammals to reach its human state. These resemblances, argued the recapitulationists, were the result of a general law operating in evolution. Development, they claimed, was constantly accelerated, so that ancestral traits were squeezed into earlier and earlier stages while new traits were tucked on at the end. And, they believed, at the end of evolution the most accelerated accelerated, and the most advanced, was man. In presenting the rise and fall of the idea of recapitulation in "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Gould takes care to place science in context. The theory was fostered in the early 19th century by a belief in both progress and unity in nature. Mired in it origins, and profoundly anthropocentric, recapitulation in its turn influenced the culture in which it arose. Some of its main proponents used it to support racism. Blacks, they said, were less accelerated in development, less advanced. Born criminals it was argued, were also sluggards in the evolutionary march and could be identified by "the morphological signs of an apish past." Even Freud felt the theory's power. He wrote that the oral and anal stages in human ontogeny "almost seem as though they were harking back to early animal forms of life," and linked them to reliance on smell and taste before upright posture made vision our dominant sense. Recapitulationist arguments about human nature may seem remote now. But the hunger for biological explanations of human behavior is as strong as ever. Popular writers like Robert Ardrey ("African Genesis," "The Territorial Imperative") argue that aggression is in our nature. E.O. Wilson, a Harvard colleague of Gould's, suggests in his book "Sociobiology" a genetic rationale for behavior that can explain both warfare and altruism. Gould, however, is skeptical of any sort of biological determinism. In his essays in particular he champions flexibility as humanity's essential characteristic. And, he points out in both his books, biological determinism is most often used to justify the status quo. If a scientist finds a class, or group, to be biologically superior, it is invariably the one to which he or she belongs. The theory of recapitulation has long been discredited. Experimental embryology, with is emphasis on the immediate mechanical and chemical causes of development, pushed aside the recapitulationists' broad, speculative approach. And the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics at the turn of the century provided a mechanism (genes) for natural selection and discounted the law of acceleration. Gould, however, draws from the dross of the old theory a significant insight -- the recognition of the importance of changes in the pace of development. It need not be accelerated; organisms can also develop more slowly than their ancestors. In either case, however, such change can be a powerful evolutionary pathway. New traits, such as an extra tooth or a novel pigment, appear with agonizing slowness. But a change in the pace of development can occur quickly and have dramatic results. A sexually mature larva may appear completely different from the ancestral adult form. In the conclusion of "Ontogeny and Phylogeny" Gould argues for the controversial position that we ourselves are evidence for the importance of such change. We evolved, he believes, through a slowing of development; and we retain many traits which now can be seen in the juvenile stages of our primate relatives and which no doubt characterized our ancestors' early stages -- rapid brain growth, a small-jawed face, upright positioning of the skull. Most important of all, our childhood is extended, enhancing our greatest advantage, the ability to learn through experience. "Ontogeny and Phylogeny" is a rich book, but it does not give up its rewards without a struggle. The book, as Gould notes, is written primarily for biologists. The documentation is voluminous, the arguments are precise and thorough, technical language is used freely, and technical issues are met head-on. Unlike popular science writing, in which the reader is kept afloat by the efforts of the writer, here one needs to know how to swim. Fortunately, much of the same material is covered in "Ever Since Darwin," which is the best sort of popularization. Gould never mystifies science; he shows both its power and its weaknesses. In one of his essays Gould asks how nonscientists are to judge the rival claims of experts. There seems to be no clear answer, but it does help immeasurably to know how science works. How to penetrate science? Start with Stephen Jay Gould. James Gorman is an associate editor of The Sciences, the magazine of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Trade Paperback, Fine

[SW: NATURAL HISTORY NATURE,]

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Lincoln, Roger J.; Boxshall, G.A. The Cambridge Illustrated Dictionary of Natural History, New York, NY, U.S.A. Cambridge University Press 1990
ISBN: 0521399416 Very Good

New York, NY, U.S.A. Cambridge University Press, 1990. Trade Paperback. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 413pp., illustrated. Near Fine/ No Jacket. Tan and green card covers, light shelfwear, a clean, tight, and unmarked copy. An illustrated guide to the entire spectrum of life on earth. 10,000 entires on plants, animals, micro-organisms and fossils; complete and up-to-date taxonomic coverage; authoritative background information on habitat, feeding, reproductive strategies, behavior and physiology; handy reference charts giving biogeographical areas, geological time scales, ocean currents, and schemes of zonation and scaling; over 700 informative illustrations. No Jacket Trade Paperback 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: SCIENCE REFERENCE]

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Skinner, B. F. (1904-1990): Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. The Century Psychology Series, Richard M. Elliott editor, NY 1938

Very Good NY: D. Appleton-Century Company Incorporated, [1938]. 1st Edition, 1st printing, 1st issue. ix+[1]+457+[1]pp. Embossed black cloth with gilt spine lettering and ruling. A very good copy. Very scarce. 1 pound 13.0 ounces = 826 grams. 9.0 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches = 22.5 x 15.3 x 3.8cm. Skinner's first psychological book and a milestone in the history of American psychology (albeit one whose effect was considerably delayed). 800 copies of the first edition were printed in the summer of 1938 and published in September, of which 500 were bound in black cloth. The remaining 300 were bound in light green cloth and issued in the mid-1940s. Both issues are rare. A small number of copies (probably no more than 5 or 6) were sent out by Skinner as presentation copies. HB

[SW: Psychology]

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Poinar, George O., and Poinar, Roberta: The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World, Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press 2001
ISBN: 0691057281 Fine

xviii, 239 pp., illus. (some col.), bib. notes, index; 23 cm. With photographs and drawings by the authors. AS NEW. "In Jurassic Park, amber fossils provided the key to bringing dinosaurs back to life. Scientists in the movie extracted dinosaur blood from mosquitoes preserved for millions of years in amber--hardened tree resin--and used the blood's DNA to revive the creatures that terrified audiences around the globe. In this book, George and Roberta Poinar use amber for a similar act of revival--only they bring back an entire ecosystem. The Poinars are world leaders in the study of amber fossils and have spent years examining the uniquely rich supply that has survived from the ancient forests of the Dominican Republic. They draw on their research here to reconstruct in words, drawings, and spectacular color photographs the ecosystem that existed on the island of Hispaniola between fifteen and forty-five million years ago. The result is the most accurate picture scientists have yet produced of any tropical forest of the past. The specimens examined by the Poinars reflect amber's extraordinary qualities as a medium for preservation. Millions of years ago, countless plants, invertebrates, and small vertebrates were trapped in the sticky resin that flowed from the trees of ancient forests and, as that resin hardened into translucent, golden amber, they were preserved in almost perfect condition. Samples analyzed and illustrated here include a wide range of insects and plants--many now extinct--as well as such vertebrates as frogs, lizards, birds, and small mammals. There are even frozen scenes of combat: an assassin bug grappling with a stingless bee, for example, and a spider attacking a termite. By examining these plants and animals and comparing them to related forms that exist today, the authors shed new light on the behavior of these organisms as well as the environment and climate in which they lived and died. The Poinars present richly detailed drawings of how the forests once appeared. They discuss how and when life colonized Hispaniola and what caused some forms to become extinct. Along the way, they describe how amber is formed, how and where it has been preserved, and how it is mined, sold, and occasionally forged for profit today. The book is a beautifully written and produced homage to a remarkable, vanished world." - Publisher. Reprint Trade Paperback 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: Amber fossils Dominican Republic, Amber Dominican Republic, Paleoecology Dominican Republic]

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