Non-fiction 21 Jan 2005 10:30 am
The Panda’s Thumb
The Panda’s Thumb
Stephen Jay Gould
Together with Richard Dawkins, Gould is (was) one of the better known scientific writers for the general public. Despite some differences in opinion regarding some fine points of the workings of evolution, they are very much in agreement in most things, and they both worked very hard to spread the scientific view on how evolution and natural selection work.
This books contains a series of essays from the late 1970s, first published in the Natural History magazine. The book’s title comes from the first article, which discusses the awkward way in which the panda has evolved something similar to the primate’s opposing thumb (in the panda, it’s actually an overgrown wrist bone the was attached to muscles originally “intended” for a real thumb). This article, and some others, argues very well for the idea that “perfection” in organisms is not the best way to prove evolution: it’s the awkward, odd, unusual quirks of the organisms, things an engineer would never do if not constrained by natural selection rules, that actually show how things have happened.
In other essays, Gould also examines many of the preconceptions and prejudices existing in the science of 100 or more years ago: ideas such as the inferiority of some races and of women, for example. He argues that we can’t really look at what scientist from that era wrote and judge it by today’s standards: their ideas and their work were immersed in their society and can’t be viewed in isolation. Much in the same way, he argues that ideas and concepts of today’s science (”today” meaning “the 1970s”, but, honestly, not that much has changed since) come from the society in which we live, and that this may cause mistakes as we assume some things to be “obvious” when they definitely are not.
And he makes much more sense than I do. His style is conversational, and a pleasure to read. The article on Mickey Mouse’s evolution is particularly good.
