The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History [Paperback]

Stephen Jay Gould (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1982 | ISBN-10: 0393300234 | ISBN-13: 978-0393300239

Review It is a wonder what Mr. Gould can do with the most unlikely phenomena: a tiny organism's use of the earth's magnetic field as a guide to food and comfort, for instance, or the panda's thumb-which isn't one. . . . Science writing at its best. (The New Yorker) Stephen Jay Gould is a serious and gifted interpreter of biological theory, of the history of ideas and of the cultural context of scientific discovery. . . . The Panda's Thumb is fresh and mind-stretching. Above all, it is exultant. So should its readers be. (H. Jack Geiger - New York Times Book Review)

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., Ltd. (1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393300234
• ISBN-13: 978-0393300239
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #709,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Second Collection of Great Essays on Science and Life, May 14, 2005

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B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (Paperback)

`The Panda's Thumb' is the second in a long series of bound essays by leading science writer Stephen Jay Gould. As important as these columns from the journal `Natural History' is, this is but a modest part of Gould's importance in American intellectual life. Gould, who died about three years ago from cancer, was a professor of geology, biology, and history of science at Harvard University and one of the world's leading researchers in broadening and interpreting Darwin's theory of evolution.

I was reminded of Gould just yesterday when an advocate of creationism (belief that the accounts of the history of the world as recounted in the Bible have some literal truth) described the theory of evolution as a `dogma'. This is exactly the kind of statement which Gould was so capable of dissecting in the most gentle manner to expose how completely wrongheaded the statement was, using the force of reason alone, without resorting to any appeal to emotion.

Gould was the consummate intellectual whose primary targets were beliefs which were based on mistaken reasoning or which base logically correct inferences on unsound or inappropriate premises.

My favorite example of the first pathology is his arguments showing that in spite of the fact that baseball statistics on performance have been dropping since the 1940's, overall baseball performance has actually been improving. This is one of the many inconsistencies between a rigorous application of probability versus an uncritical intuition.

The application of the word `dogma' to a scientific theory may be an example of the second pathology. The speaker is confusing scientific belief and religious belief. Scientific discourse creates theories whose power of explanation comes from its grounding in observation. As soon as an observation contradicts a theory, the quest to improve the theory or find a better one should begin. In Science, a `theory' is not something that is unproved, it is something which is believed and which is subject to disproof by evidence. A religious belief or dogma is, at least in Christian theology, something that is taken to be true because it was said under the influence of divine inspiration. By it's nature, since it is the result of a private experience (See William James' great `The Varieties of Religious Experience'), it cannot be disproved. That is not to say that the person who witnessed this experience is not free to write it down and try to convince someone else of the truth of what the true believer says they experienced. The whole Bible is composed of such stories. The fact that the Bible has inspired and improved the quality of life of billions of people over the millennia is evidence that it's message is worth advertising. But none of that changes the fact that religious beliefs are based on faith, which by its very nature is NOT based on empirical evidence.

The very best example of this dichotomy is in the methods used by the investigators on the CSI TV show, where the physical evidence is paramount and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence there is. That someone says it is true does not make it so! This includes things said and written down 3000 years ago.

While I am going on a length without talking about the book `The Panda's Thumb', I wanted to state as clearly as possible what Gould was all about. And, I chose a review of this book to explain Gould's general position because it was the finding of this book in a bookstore in 1981 which lead me to the discovery of Gould's writing, and I have been a fan of his writing up to his death.

If I may, my love of Gould's writing is a match made in heaven, as my interest in evolutionary theory goes back to the tenth grade and my interest in the general history and philosophy of science goes back at least to the mid-1960's when I began my study of philosophy. My focus on this book is also based on the fact that Gould's essays in his earlier books seem just a little fresher than his later works. Whether that is because his ideas were coming to paper for the first time of because he was not distracted by the battle with his cancer I do not know. Gould himself says he found his earlier essays somewhat shallow. I simply don't see it. It is possible that the earlier essays were somewhat less technical, but if that is so, the difference is subtle. It may all be due to the fact that Gould revisits certain themes over and over, so my reading them for the first time had a lot more punch than the 10th time around.

The subject of the title essay in this book, the panda's thumb, is all about a sixth digit on the panda's hand which is not a true finger, but something developed out of a bone in the wrist to enable the panda to easily strip leaves off of bamboo shoots, the panda's favorite gourmet snack. While this may seem like a really insignificant detail, this is one of Gould's persistent themes. Most of the best examples of evolutionary theory can be found in some of the most innocent looking cases. I am constantly reminded of this as I discover examples in the oddest of places, as the last book I reviewed on bees and honey gives the story of a little experiment conducted by Charles Darwin on how bees construct their hexagonal cells of beeswax to hold honey.

As with all his books, this collection is divided into eight (more or less) sections covering all his various fields of interest such as Evolution, Darwinania, Human Abilities and Evolution, Science and Politics, the nature of change, geology and fossils, biological conjectures (Were dinosaurs dumb?), biological scale and development.

Gould is arguably the best writer on science for laymen in this generation. Everyone should read him, and this is an excellent place to start.