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A review by srsmn
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
5.0
excellent book. the few goodreads reviews saying that the book is "out of date" are by readers who have missed the forest for the trees. it doesn't really matter that uniramia has been replaced by hexapoda + myriapoda or that many of the strange stars of this story have since been demoted from possible new phyla to just stem groups. the two main points still stand; 1.) animals are classified by body plans that are very highly conserved, the burgess shale yielded species that exhibited unusual patterns of segmentation etc. and the desire to try wedge some of these guys into more familiar groups was obviously a mistake and in some cases caused evidence to be overlooked 2) contingency played a larger role in the history of life on earth than most people typically care to think about.
SJG does a great job spinning the scientific reevaluation of the burgess fossils into an entertaining story and bearing with him through all the emphasis on arthropod anatomy will pay off. i find it funny that the people who criticise gould's popular works fall into two opposite camps, those who think his writing is too dry for the layman and those who are offended at the thought of a scientist talking about science as social activity. maybe he could have just written a nice book about stamps instead?
SJG does a great job spinning the scientific reevaluation of the burgess fossils into an entertaining story and bearing with him through all the emphasis on arthropod anatomy will pay off. i find it funny that the people who criticise gould's popular works fall into two opposite camps, those who think his writing is too dry for the layman and those who are offended at the thought of a scientist talking about science as social activity. maybe he could have just written a nice book about stamps instead?