The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History (Hardcover)

Gould begins this series with a description of fake 'fossils' found in Morroco. He doesn't credit this with widening acceptance of ancient remains, but turns it into an essay describing a notorious event in mid-18th Century Germany. Johannes Beringer was hoaxed by his own students into accepting a number of impossible conigurations found in some local rocks as genuine 'fossils'. The effect of the hoax may inhibited geological theories.

As with so many of Gould's essay collections, he engages in the redemption of scientists now overshadowed by modern scientific thinking. Buffon is portrayed as a man of immense energy and dedication. Lavoisier's struggle to comprehend the earth's processes foretold ideas later expressed by Hutton and Lyell. Lamarck, that exposed target of Darwinian assaults, is restored to an enhanced position in the scientific pantheon. Even Richard Owen, who used such devious methods in assailing Darwin's natural selection, is given absolution.

What, then, are we to make of Gould's continuous attempts to degrade the reputation of Charles Darwin. This isn't the initial strike; in other collections Gould has judged Darwin as a coward for holding back publication of Origin for twenty years. Elsewhere, he's criticized Darwin as a hypocrite due to the master of Down's social standing. Here, he uses advertising techniques to characterize Darwin as a 'Sly Dullard'. The Oxford dictionary translates that into 'Michievous and Mentally Slow'. How that appellation can be applied to the man who conceived the grandest idea in science is elusive. Darwin's spirit should not be found guilty simply because he lacked flamboyance. If Gould wished to categorize Darwin as a 'plodder', it would be far less objectionable. It isn't Darwin's fault that he didn't arrive at his concept in a flash of malarial dilerium, as Wallace did. Darwin spent those two decades building evidence, a proper scientific technique.

Still, most of us have learned to grit our teeth and bear Gould's anti-Darwinian diatribes, focussing instead on his fine writing skills and breadth of subject matter. He certainly needed them in the essay on Two Work Sites. In this compassionate essay, he struggles with aspects of human culture, finally pronouncing it a 'Lamarckian' mechanism. One can visualize him agonizing before his word processor to find a substitute for 'meme' so as not to concede a single point to Richard Dawkins. A tribute, indeed, to his writing skilss, but a signal failure to aknowledge an idea growing in strength.

I'm glad I read the book and I think it has made me look at many things in a different way from how I might have approached them before reading this book

If you wonder what to read next then this is just right. There is bound to be something in the book that captures your imagination.