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Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (Paperback)

by Stephen Jay Gould (Author) "We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose for depicting the cosmos in miniature..." (more)
Key Phrases: shrinking variation, bacterial mode, mean batting average, American League, National League, New York (more...)
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The human mind has a trusty device for simplifying a complex world: reduce to averages and identify trends. Although valuable, the risk is that we ignore variations and end up with a skewed view of reality. In evolutionary terms, the result is a view in which humans are the inevitable pinnacle of evolutionary progress, instead of, as Stephen Jay Gould patiently argues, "a cosmic accident that would never arise again if the tree of life could be replanted." The implications of Gould's argument may threaten certain of our philosophical and religious foundations but will in the end provide us with a clearer view of, and a greater appreciation for, the complexities of our world. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
In his first single-subject book of original writing since Wonderful Life (LJ 9/1/89), Harvard paleontologist Gould examines trends in natural variation throughout organic evolution, thereby discrediting the abstract ideas of eternal forms, fixed essences, and intrinsic progress. His insightful study even applies to sports systems, accounting for the apparent extinction of .400 hitting in baseball. In light of fossil evidence and overwhelming biodiversity, he concludes that there is no linear pattern or ultimate design to evolution. Instead, life is a spreading web or a branching bush; variation, rather than progression, is nature's expression of excellence. Consequently, our species is not the inevitable end-goal of evolution. It remains for Gould to consider in his next book the ethical and theological implications of his nonprogressive and naturalistic world view. (Are bacteria really as important as human beings?) Gould's book is rather a dense read for the average patron, but his ideas are important. Recommended for all academic and public library science collections.
-?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 244 pages
  • Publisher: Three Rivers Press (September 16, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0609801406
  • ISBN-13: 978-0609801406
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #33,777 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose for depicting the cosmos in miniature. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
shrinking variation, bacterial mode, mean batting average, planktonic forams, biotic competition, component lineages, median mortality, passive trend, increasing excellence, batting skills, most lineages, minimal complexity, right tail, absolute records, driven trend, average play, fielding averages, individual lineages, decreasing complexity, right skewed, bacterial biomass, tougher competition
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
American League, National League, New York, Origin of Species, Boston Marathon, United States, Genesis Myth, Old World, Ted Williams, Thomas Henry, Bob Gibson, Charles Darwin, World Series, Age of Bacteria, Age of Man, Tony Gwynn, Wee Willie Keeler, Bill Terry, George Brett, Julian Huxley, Nolan Ryan, North American, Rod Carew, Wade Boggs
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Customer Reviews

49 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (49 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Marching forward? backward? . . . or just "diversifying"?, August 4, 2004
This review is from: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (Paperback)
After seeing that there were already some 40 or so reviews of this wonderful book, and having read it some years ago I was reluctant to add another. But, being a fan of Gould's magnificent "Wonderful Life" (1989) and seeing some negative, and misleading reviews of this particular book, I had to chime in. To begin with, Gould's books are highly readable and enjoyable as he has a great capacity to relate objective science to the subjective world. "Full House" will be challenging to you if you do not already understand or buy into Darwinism. If not, you'll definitely take issue with his seemingly harsh conclusions (i.e. "Humans are here by the luck of the draw, not the inevitability of life's direction or evolution's mechanism" p.175). The book is about diversity and "the spread of excellence" on earth. Consequently, it puts man in his place (just another organism amongst many, and quite minor compared to bacteria) amongst greater geologic history; and this can be a bit difficult to swallow at first. But read on!

Utilizing baseball and the disappearance of .400 ave. hitting as one major example to illustrate the nature of evolution, Gould shows through statistics how one aspect of the game (hitting) has declined over time, while the rest (pitching & fielding) have increased in skill level. It all makes perfect sense. That's not to say one can't argue with him (although he's now dead), but Gould's contributions to evolutionary theory can be controversial to the unconverted - especially the religious (namely, Catholics & those with firmly held, comfortable beliefs in Manifest Desitiny). Gould (and most science) is directly opposed to this type of anthropocentric thinking; but not, however, traditional Deist beliefs in which God does not interfere with human evolution. In many regards, "Wonderful Life" and "Full House" comfortably fit into an older, more original Christianity - that of Gnosticism, in which the earth is a sort of abandoned proving ground. Gould conjectures: "...perhaps we are, whatever our glories and accomplishments, a momentary cosmic accident that would never rise again if the tree of life could be replanted from seed and regrown under similar conditions" p.18.

The premiss of "Full House" is that "progress is, nonetheless, a delusion based on social prejudice and psychological hope engendered by our unwillingness to accept the plain (and true) meaning of the fourth Freudian revolution" p.20. Later on, Gould reiterates: "The vaunted progress of life is really random motion away from simple beginnings, not directed impetus toward inherently advantageous complexity" p.173. He could be wrong. He could be right. He does however back up his ideas with plenty of observable proofs, experience (he was a paleontologist), and statistics - all in Gould's entertaining and thought-provoking signature style. The fact is, neither Gould nor Darwin nor Freud is saying a person ought to stop striving for excellence - in fact, they're encouraging it! Reading a book like "Full House", or "Wonderful Life" is challenging to many commonly held assumptions about human life, and thus, potentially upsetting, but ultimately uplifting in my view. One optimistic conclusion that may be drawn from this seemingly dismal and dry evolutionary theory is that our life is a unique, wonderful opportunity unparalleled, and definitely not the norm of things.

If the above quotes from the book sound intriguing to you, and you're craving more information, then I highly recommend you try both "Full House" and it's paradigm shifting predecessor, "Wonderful Life". I guarantee that you'll come away with a mind more open, and thoughtful about evolution and life than ever before. Happy reading!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars We're Surrounded, May 22, 2006
Having been buried by statistics courses in college, it has always amazed me how people build entire empires out of the slimmest of statistical information. Making judgments based purely on an 'mean' response is an invitation to the error of thinking that a change in average means a trend is developing, or that you are even likely to get an average response in any particular case. To be able to make an even educated guess one has to look at the mode, the median, and various statistical distributions. Even then, it's possible to be wrong, but at least you will have an excuse.

This book by the late Stephen Gould is one of the best discussions of statistical fallacy I've ever seen. Gould starts out with the story of is confrontation with a form of cancer that is almost invariably fatal within a very short time period. Or rather, the modal life span after diagnosis is very short. Gould was a survivor, and his discussion of how the mode has very little to do with individual cases, and how that the studies are skewed by being left limited (there are no negative life expectancies) is enlightening.

Having made his initial point, Gould elaborates it by turning to the disappearance of the .400 batting average. Because there is a lot more information about baseball than there is about a rare form of cancer, Gould is able to look at another form of statistical skew, where there may very well be an upper physical limit, and the field involves multiple variables (pitching, hitting, etc.). By the time he is done the reader will be confident that batting is doing fine, and ready for the real reason Gould wrote Full House - just who really is the boss of earth.

From Victorian times onward one of the 'myths' we humans tell each other is that we are somehow the apex of evolution. That not only is progress (as expressed by intelligence and complexity) inevitable, but that it actually is progress. Using the same statistics that analyzed the .400 average, Gould explodes many of the misunderstandings about what evolution actually is. We are reminded that humans, in fact, all of the 'animal kingdom' are the tiniest part of life on the earth. The creatures with the most species, best ability to survive, and sheer numbers and weight, are the lowly bacteria. For some 3.4 billion years they have ruled the earth, and everything else has been their food.

On top of finding out that we may very well be the last representatives of a dying genera, we must suffer with the fact that we have been beaten out by the most elementary of life forms. Gould reminds us that 'It is a gift to be simple,' writing in a style that is both entertaining and easily accessible. You may start out statistically disadvantaged, but by the end of 'Full House' you will have a much clearer picture of statistics and evolution. While Gould does not break any new territory in this book, he does take us on a wonderful tour of the real world.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars 5 Stars for Content & Substance, 4 for Style, January 17, 2003
By Vincent Wong (Honolulu, Hawaii) - See all my reviews
Professor Gould has made a powerful argument in his usually convincing manner. The book presents a strong case against the popular anthropocentric view of natural evolution. Gould offers an extension to Darwin's natural selection by giving learned opinions on statistical evidence (the disappearing of 0.400 batting average) and a philosophical amalgamation of logical deductions. The author's intelligence and knowledge shine through his articulate lather of collegiate vocabulary (some of which in Latin--that's the reason for the not-so-generous 4 stars.) Gould is an excellent science writter whose passion for his beloved field is self evident. I believe he too, as a human being, scholar and writer, is one of those rare points at the 'right wall' of extreme achievements. Three themes are particaularly noteworthy: variations (not complexity) breed excellence, natural selection implies no progress, humans are not the epitome of life in the universe but merely an actualization of an improbable chance in evolution. Some readers may appreciate his obvious exclusion of religious counterpoints; an argument, however, could be made that such otherwise inclusion of an diametrically opposing view would have shown academic well roundedness. The book is an intellectually entertaining work. If a reader is open to a paradigm shift, Gould is likely the author to do the shifting. His recent death is our national loss.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Dense reading and not quite worth the effort
Gould's examination of evolutionary trends is a tough read. Despite his efforts to lighten the book with humor, this one takes work for the non-scientist to comprehend fully. Read more
Published 23 days ago by J. Carroll

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Supplement for High School Science Classes
There are already several excellent reviews below describing the contents of this book. My purpose for writing is to report that I continue to use it very successfully with high... Read more
Published 4 months ago by D. G. Frank

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful concept - (somewhat) difficult to read
Well....
Gould's message is pure, and correct. We take complexity as a trend ("thing") that is presumably advancing with time, rather than recognizing it as a part of the... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Chem

5.0 out of 5 stars Much better than Taleb and Mandelbrot
This book is about how to analyze data. It is the clearest and best written book on the subject I have read so far. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Gaetan Lion

4.0 out of 5 stars No bias in evolution towards greater complexity - explained
Does evolution have a tendency to make more and more complex organisms? Most of us would give a confident yes answer to this question; however this book convinces its readers that... Read more
Published on April 10, 2007 by Cevat Cokol

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Superb Offering
I have been rereading several books in my library on natural selection and came across this one sandwiched between "wonderful Life" and "Eight Little Piggies". Read more
Published on December 24, 2006 by Avid Reader

4.0 out of 5 stars Yes and No
Having finished Stephen Gould's book Full House let me opine. An excellent book by all accounts, however, to quibble, he does not convince that there is no innate driving... Read more
Published on October 27, 2006 by Jesse W. Leamon

5.0 out of 5 stars Natural selection is not a synonym of progress
This book is a forceful illustration of some basic theorems presented by G.C. Williams in his book 'Adaptation and Natural selection': 'there is nothing in the basic structure of... Read more
Published on December 29, 2003 by Luc REYNAERT

3.0 out of 5 stars not an essential read, but a pleasant one
I come to the book partly as a result of a direct self-study on the issues of creation-evolution-design debate, and partly because i like SJG's writings. Read more
Published on November 30, 2003 by R. M. Williams

4.0 out of 5 stars Some very good points - if a bit strained philosophically
It is sad that Dr. Gould was taken away so soon. He always made interesting points, offered some startling insights, and was generally fun - he was even acerbic in a fun... Read more
Published on October 20, 2003 by Craig Matteson

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