The Panda's Thumb

Reviewed by: Henry E. Neufeld

Gould, Stephen Jay The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1980.

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As might be expected, I found this book very exciting reading. Rather than further commenting on my appreciation for Dr. Gould's writing, let me give the sections and essays along with occasional notes on the content of this book.

1. Perfection and Imperfection: A Trilogy on a Panda's Thumb
   Includes The Panda's Thumb, Senseless Signs of History and Double Trouble, all dealing with imperfections in the design of creatures and how they give us signs of that creatures history.
2. Darwiniana
   Natural Selection and the Human Brain: Darwin vs Wallace, Darwin's Middle Road, Death before Birth or a Mite's Nunc Dimittis, Shades of Lamarck and Caring Groups and Selfish Genes. I found the Death before Birth essay particularly interesting, and since I read both Dawkins and Gould with appreciation, I found the last essay interesting as well.
3. Human Evolution
   A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse, Piltdown Revisited, Our Greatest Evolutionary Step, and In the Midst of Life . . . The first of these essays is rather charming. Picture a famous paleontologist measuring pictures of Mickey Mouse and his relatives with calipers. It is my understanding that Dr. Gould has recanted the major charge of Piltdown Revisited. If I can find the references on this, including the now accepted solution to the puzzle, I will post them here at a later date.
4. Science and Politics of Human Differences
   Wide Hats and Narrow Minds, Women's Brains, Dr. Down's Syndrome and Flaws in a Victorian Veil. These essays are largely about the same topic as Dr. Gould's later book, The Mismeasure of Man, which I have reviewed elsewhere (the link leads to the review. This is a shorter version of some of that research, but I consider these essays very important, for what it's worth!
5. The Pace of Change
   The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change, Return of the Hopeful Monster, The Great Scablands Debate and A Quahog is a Quahog. These essays deal largely with punctuationism and the nature of change. I was particularly interested in reading The Great Scablands Debate because I have travelled through that area with roadside geology guides. I had no idea of the history of the debate, however. Possibly the guides had this information and I skipped over the history to get to the immediate information. In any case, this essay is well worth reading.
6. Early Life
   An Early Start, Crazy Old Randolph Kirkpatrick, Bathybius and Eozoon and Might We Fit Inside a Sponge's Cell. The second of these essays is interesting in noting how someone might be both brilliant and insightful and yet go off track with a crackpot theory. Sometimes I feel that Dr. Gould is going too far in pointing out the fallibility of scientists. On the other hand, there are certainly plenty of people available who go too far the other way!
7. They were Despised and Rejected
   Were Dinosaurs Dumb?, The Telltale Wishbone, Nature's Odd Couples and Sticking up for Marsupials. Those who find these essays, mostly on dinosaurs, interesting might also want to check out The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs (the link leads to my review). The latter is not nearly so engaging as storytelling, but is well worth it if these essays lead you to want to study the topic more seriously. I am less than an amateur at these topics, and I found the book readable for the most part.
8. Size and Time
   Our Allotted Lifetimes, Natural Attraction: Bacteria, The Birds and the Bees and Time's Vastness. Again, these essays deal with time and change.

As you may suspect by now, I like this book!

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