The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Written By: Stephen Jay Gould
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 575.0162
EAN: 9780393308198
Feature: ISBN13: 9780393308198
ISBN: 0393308197
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 1992-08-17
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Editorial Reviews for The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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With sales of well over one million copies in North America alone, the commercial success of Gould's books now matches their critical acclaim. Reissued in a larger format, with a handsome new cover, The Panda's Thumb will introduce a new generation of readers to this unique writer, who has taken the art of the scientific essay to new heights. Illustrations.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: More Stephen Jay Gould
Comment: More essays by Stephen Jay Gould. They are brilliant, as always. And, as always, Gould's essays give me something to think about.
Customer Rating:
Summary: In Memorium
Comment: This is the book that reminds us why Stephen Jay Gould was the Great One. He was perhaps the greatest naturalist of his generation, as measured by being able to get across complex scientific ideas for the common man in an interesting manner. Additionally, he was a great scientist in his own right. The world is a sorrier place to lose him.
Gould's essays are far-ranging, but center around his view of life and evolution- through punctuated equilibrium. Using analogy (allowed in natural history essays) and his extensive research experience, he looks at how paradaigms shift, and why they should. He describes the evidence and logic behind a punctuated model as opposed to gradualism. And along the way lets us learn some fascinating new worlds in human and animal life.
At times I don't agree with his strong dislike of religion. At times his writing is dated- to be expected in a book now 25 years old. (He talks with great excitement about how we can now determine the code of RNA.) But his writing is always interesting, always thought-provoking and challenging, always novel. He has a new way of seeing things, even after a quarter century. He forces the reader to confront their preconceptions and shift their paradaigms. You learn, yes, but with great joy, and a spice of humor.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Two Panda's Thumbs up!!
Comment: The "argument from design" traces back at least to the medieval theology as a favorite proof for the existence of God. The argument runs that the exquisite design and interrelation of earthly organisms can be explained only by the existence of an Intelligent Designer.
I continue to believe in God, but Stephen Jay Gould's essays in "The Panda's Thumb" is a rather large nail in the coffin of this argument.
In essay after essay, Gould describes nature's mistakes and improvisations, seeming proof against the work of an intelligent designer. For instance, the "thumb" of pandas -- a specialized appendage to strip leaves from bamboo shoots -- is not a true thumb, but a weirdly-designed extension of a wrist bone. Gould demonstrates many other animal adaptations, from orchids to hermit crabs, that use unlikely body parts to perform survival tasks required by later generations of organisms.
Gould's explanation of neoteny - the tendency of organisms to retain anatomical features from childhood - is one of his most fascinating chapters. With a simple mutation, the basis for much uniquely human behavior and anatomy comes in to focus. We humans don't develop elongated snouts like other mammals; we retain our capacity to play throughout our lives rather than abandoning it at puberty; our brains continue to grow after birth; we are helpless and dependent on our parents far longer than other mammals. And in a typically Gouldian play of ideas, he charts the changing facial features of Mickey Mouse over the years to show him being drawn with more infant -like (and therefore human-like) features - rounder head, bigger eyes, shorter snout.
Though Gould is not a theist, "Panda's Thumb" is not an argument against God, but *for* the appropriate use of science to describe the natural world. We theists are well-served by books like this, which give us the ammunition needed to battle cultural forces that seek to blind us to the truth that lies right in front of us in the natural world and of which we are a part.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Evolutionary theory meets Mickey Mouse and selfish genes
Comment: The second collection of Gould's articles from Natural History continues to explore Darwin's themes and the resultant ideas since. There's several interesting essays here, including my favorite one in which the evolution of Mickey Mouse is discussed.One of the essays here dealt with Richard Dawkins' controversial stand (in The Selfish Gene) on genes in which he states that a person is just a gene's way to make another gene. (This is different from normal evolutionary thought in that genes there are the subject of random variation which then is subject to the environment and tested.) Gould is not convinced by Dawkins' theory, mainly because, he says, there is no evidence that genes can be linked to specific attributes, i.e., there isn't an "eye" gene. Gould wrote this some years back, so it will be interesting to see if he revisits this subject now that researchers have indeed discovered the "eye" gene (through testing on flies). Gould also covers Robert Bakker's theories about warm-blooded dinosaurs (later written up in Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies) and the link to birds, a good essay for people to review prior to the hullabaloo that will follow Jurassic Park 2 (it's always fun to check up on an author's source material).
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Summary: Enjoyable but dated
Comment: An entertaining and elegantly written collection of discursive essays on natural history and evolution. The nature stories and the anecdotes about eccentric naturalists are interesting.
It has a 1980 original publication date. Perhaps because of this date there is very little about DNA and nothing about HLA and tissue-typing. I shall check his later books to see if he ever got up-to-date on these. (He died a month ago). He was concerned to defend his field as being real science against "haughty and high-riding mathematicians and experimentalists." In fact this sort of biology seems more akin to history and archeology than to hard science, but that adds to its readability rather than detracts from it.
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More Information on The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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