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Life's Grandeur: Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin
 
 

Life's Grandeur: Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin [Kindle Edition]

Stephen Jay Gould
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product Description

Book Description

'Reading Gould is not merely a pleasure but an education and a chronicle of the times' Observer

Product Description

In his characteristically iconoclastic and original way, Stephen Jay Gould argues that progress and increasing complexity are not inevitable features of the evolution of life on Earth. Further, if we wish to see grandeur in life, we must discard our selfish and anthropocentric view of evolution and learn to see it as Darwin did, as the random but unfathomably rich source of 'endless forms most beautiful and wonderful'. Any rational view of nature tells us that we are a simple branch on an immense bush; and that life on Earth is remarkable not for where it is leading, but for the fullness and constancy of its variety, ingenuity and diversity.

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 1713 KB
  • Print Length: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Digital (31 Dec 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B006H4CXIA
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #95,933 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I like Gould's collections of essays a lot. This "full-length book" however was rather disappointing. The main problem it suffers from is redundancy. First of all it is "internally" redundant, in the sense that Gould will stress certain points again and again. It's as if he's no too sure about the readers' intellectual capacities. Some good editing could have made this book half as short. Secondly, it's also "externally" redundant: a lot of what is in here can be found in essays in one of his excellent collections (e.g. if you've read the essays he wrote about his bout with cancer or about how batters in baseball haven't gotten worse, then don't bother reading this book). If you've never read Gould and you want to read something by him, I suggest you read one of the collections of essays (e.g. The Flamingo's Smile, or Bully for Brontosaurus)
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Enlightening 25 April 2012
Format:Paperback
I read this book some time ago but the ideas in it have stuck with me. The analogy of a drunk man staggering along the pavement with a wall on one side and a gutter on the other. A limit on one side but not on the other. Evolution as spikes of complexity to the open side, coming and going. So much better than the idea of a systematic evolution from the simple to the complex.
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Amazon.com:  1 review
Great work by a great author. 4 Sep 2011
By Nathan Phillips - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is yet another work by Stephen Jay Gould that is enlightening while entertaining. The importance of the main point of the book concerning misleading statistics can be applied in various parts of one's life. Although I am no fan of baseball, the baseball related examples do shed much light upon the subjects at hand.
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