Stephen Jay Gould's writings on history - both of the natural world and of the study of that natural world - had made him a household name by the time of his death in 2002. This work contains a selection of Gould's writing, including some of the most famous of his essays and extracts from his major [...]

'A masterpiece of analysis and imagination...It centres on a sensational discovery in the field of palaeontology - the existence, in the Burgess Shale...of 530-million-year-old fossils unique in age, preservation and diversity...With skill and passion, Gould takes this mute collection of fossils and[...]

This title, completed shortly before the author's death, uses the centuries-old conflict between science and the humanities - between the notion of relying solely on experiment and that of reason and imagination - to delve into burning scientific issues of the past and present.[...]

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 [...]

Stephen Jay Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of choosing between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean that accords dignity and distinction to each realm? At the heart of Gould's penetrating argument is a luc[...]

Evolutionary theory is the theme that binds together these essays on such seemingly disparate topics as the feeding habits of flamingos, flowers and snails that change from male to female and sometimes back again, and the extinction from baseball of the .400 hitter.[...]

More than any other modern scientist, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science.[...]

Exposes the fatal flaws in the ranking of people according to their supposed gifts and limits by discussing the development of the theory of limits and by reanalyzing the data on which it is based[...]

The world's most revered and eloquent interpreter of evolutionary ideas offers here a work of explanatory force unprecedented in our time--a landmark publication, both for its historical sweep and for its scientific vision. With characteristic attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes [...]

Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this "full house" of variation, and not as the progress or degeneratio[...]

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" was Haeckel's answer--the wrong one--to the most vexing question of nineteenth-century biology: what is the relationship between individual development (ontogeny) and the evolution of species and lineages (phylogeny)? In this, the first major book on the subject in[...]

In Why People Believe Weird Things, science historian Michael Shermer explores the very human reasons we find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. The editor of Skeptic magazine and the director of the Skeptics Society, Shermer shows how the eternal search for meaning[...]

Harvard palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould was, until his death in 2002, America's best-known natural scientist. His monthly essays in "Natural History" magazine were widely read by both scientists and ordinary citizens with an interest in science. One of his books won the National Book Award, and an[...]