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Stephen Jay Gould

Masataka Watanabe

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

by Stephen Jay Gould (Author)

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"[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."―James Gleick, New York Times Book Review

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived―a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

ISBN-10

039330700X
ISBN-13

978-0393307009
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

September 17, 1990
Language

English
Dimensions

6.1 x 1 x 9.2 inches
Print length

352 pages
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The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Burgess Shale of British Columbia "is the most precious and important of all fossil localities," writes Stephen Jay Gould. These 600-million-year-old rocks preserve the soft parts of a collection of animals unlike any other. Just how unlike is the subject of Gould's book.

Gould describes how the Burgess Shale fauna was discovered, reassembled, and analyzed in detail so clear that the reader actually gets some feeling for what paleobiologists do, in the field and in the lab. The many line drawings are unusually beautiful, and now can be compared to a wonderful collection of photographs in Fossils of the Burgess Shale by Derek Briggs, one of Gould's students.

Burgess Shale animals have been called a "paleontological Rorschach test," and not every geologist by any means agrees with Gould's thesis that they represent a "road not taken" in the history of life. Simon Conway Morris, one of the subjects of Wonderful Life, has expressed his disagreement in Crucible of Creation. Wonderful Life was published in 1989, and there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods, with radical new ideas fighting for dominance. But even though many scientists disagree with Gould about the radical oddity of the Burgess Shale animals, his argument that the history of life is profoundly contingent--as in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, from which this book takes its title--has become more accepted, in theories such as Ward and Brownlee's Rare Earth hypothesis. And Gould's loving, detailed exposition of the labor it took to understand the Burgess Shale remains one of the best explanations of scientific work around. --Mary Ellen Curtin

From Publishers Weekly

The Burgess Shale, a small quarry in the mountains of British Columbia, opened a window on the first multicellular animals. Gould, eminent life-historian and author, introduces us to the creatures of Burgess Shale and to those who have painstakingly examined them. "This is exciting and illuminating material on the beginnings of life," wrote PW. Illustrated.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (September 17, 1990)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 039330700X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393307009
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.13 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 1 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #275,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #162 in Geology (Books)
- #352 in Literature
- #852 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 458 ratings

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Stephen Jay Gould
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Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. He published over twenty books, received the National Book and National Book Critics Circle Awards, and a MacArthur Fellowship.
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Masataka Watanabe
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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

458 global ratings

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4 star		17%
3 star		8%
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1 star		2%

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Miguelito

One of my favorite books ever

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2022

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Well it’s great to have a copy again especially it’sgreat to see Marianne Collins’ beautiful illustrations again that’s really the main reason I ordered this again I used to have a hardback copy from when it came out but I have no idea where that is now

One person found this helpful

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LastRanger

Through A Glass Darkley.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2013

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In British Columbia, Canada paleontologist Charles D Walcott made the discovery of a lifetime. The year was 1909 and Walcott's field season was just winding down when he and his team began finding fossils in the Burgess Shale formation of the Rocky Mountains. Over the next 15 years Walcott collected thousands of strange and unusual fossils that he considered to be ancestral to all of our modern day phyla. In Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould traces the history of this incredible find and comes to some controversial conclusions of his own. The book, published in 1989, was a best seller and won the Aventis prize for science books in 1991 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in that same year. Some of Gould's colleagues agreed with his conclusions, some did not. The resulting debates went on for years and, on some points, continues to this day. Although some of his original examples were later invalidated by newer research, his main theme is still a matter of some contention. Anyone who has read Gould's monthly essays in Natural History magazine knows that he is an accomplished writer for the interested layperson and Wonderful Life is no exception to that rule. Some 50 years after Walcott's time, in the late '60s a team of of modern scientist led by Harry Whittington did a extensive rework of Walcott's original study resulting in new insights on the biology of these long dead animals. Gould does a detailed accounting of the methodology and technics used in that study. Some of Whittington's findings agreed with Walcott's and some did not, but from this layman's point of view, it made for fascinating reading. A good part of the book addresses some long standing questions in paleontology. Multicellular animals make their first appearance in the fossil record with the Cambrian Explosion and with the Ediacara fauna. How did life get to that point? Did evolution proceed from a simple beginning that, over time, became more complex and diverse? Or did one-celled life first evolve, in a kind of explosion, into many varieties of multi-celled organisms, only a few of which survive today? Did Walcott "shoehorn" his fossils into modern phyla? Were some of the Burgess Shale animals just dead ends that were out competed in the race for survival? The answers to these questions depend on who is doing the analysis and who is doing the asking. In paleontology the study of fossils is like having an obscure, imperfect view of reality and it's only with time and further study that we can get closer to the truth. Wonderful Life is a great book that will give you one mans view on the nature of history and of life.

LastRanger

16 people found this helpful

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Timbuktu

It's Not A "Wonderful Life"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 4, 2015

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While the late Stephen Jay Gould, along with his primary subject, Charles Walcott (the discoverer of the Burgess Shale) were brilliant scientists, they both, nevertheless, erred grievously in their final conclusions.

Gould correctly accused Walcott, a Presbyterian Christian, of “shoehorning” his Cambrian fossil findings to fit his preconceived belief that evolution is progressive, “representing God’s way of showing himself through nature.” Walcott refused to appreciate, just as today’s self-identified “Christian evolutionists,” that there simply is no compatibility between godless evolution and the existence of God. Not only is the term “Christian evolution” an oxymoron, it invites justified derision by true evolutionists who view the former as - borrowing from Lenin’s lexicon - mere “useful idiots.”

Gould, on the other hand, flippantly dismissed God’s hand in creation despite, ironically, his own evidence to the contrary. To begin with, he notes that “in the 500 million years since the Cambrian Explosion, not one single new phylum or basic anatomical design has evolved.” Small wonder that throughout geological history there is only one “Explosion,” just as there is only one “Big Bang.” These two exceptional, arcane prehistoric events lead unavoidably to a logical conclusion – as Einstein accepted - of divine creativity.

Gould’s revised interpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna correctly recognized that “each of these orphan organisms represents another sign that disparity reached its peak during the Cambrian Explosion and life’s subsequent history has been a tale of decimation.” As such, Gould correctly deducted: “If the human mind is a product of only one such set, then we may not be randomly evolved … but our origin is the product of massive historical contingency.” He goes on to say: “Replay the tape a million times from a Burgess beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again.” And even in the mathematically remotest chance that “the same general pathways emerge,” says Gould, “it might take twenty billion years to reach self-consciousness this time – except that the earth would be incinerated billions of years before.”

So Stephen Gould, an eminent scientist, can find no better answer to the existence of man than mere blind luck… incredibly low-odds blind luck. It is this intellectual stubbornness to even consider intelligent design that has led many evolutionists to even doubt the Big Bang. Perhaps there are multiple universes, they imagine, and we humans were just lucky enough to have evolved in the one lone universe that offered just the right conditions for intelligent life. This is no longer scientific theory, but theological faith that borders on the humorous.

In his conclusion, Gould, asserted: “Homo sapiens, I fear, is a ‘thing too small’ (three-word description borrowed from Robert Frost’s poem Design) in a vast universe, a WILDLY IMPROBABLE [capitols my emphasis] evolutionary event well within the realm of contingency. Some find the prospect depressing; I have always regarded it as exhilarating, a source of both freedom and consequently moral responsibility.”

Count me among the “some” who find such a WILDLY IMPROBABLE scenario as “depressing.” If Homo sapiens are not God’s crowning creation, than a rock in my backyard will have more meaning than me when I die, simply because the inanimate object has longevity. The thought is more than merely depressing, it is, ironically, insulting to the intelligence of the eminent Stephen Gould himself. Moreover, what “moral responsibility” is there in a world that Gould himself concluded “makes no statement about progress.” If man does not represent species “progression,” then he has no more moral responsibility than a Cockroach.

So, finally, why the paradox between Stephen Gould, the brilliant detective of evidence, and Stephen Gould, the proponent of ludicrous assumptions? In the absence of the recognition of a creator God, the answer is ironic. On the one hand, Gould strips man of his dignity by referring to him as a “thing too small.” On the other hand, Gould implies that man is not accountable to God and, therefore by reasonable deduction, is his own god.

No, it’s not a Wonderful Life … in the absence of a creator God.

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John Morris

Wonderful Life: a wonderful account of life 500 million years ago.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 29, 2014

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A fine, well written account of a rigorous investigation, exploration and reinterpretation of the 3-dimensional structures of Cambrian fauna and ecology. An enlightened perspective, which dispels several paleontologica myths. The writing has many delightful touches, such as describing the first known examples of cannibalism, analogies involving Sylvester, the cartoon cat and steam rollers, the use of passive verbs in monographs and finally, the comparison of logical versus psychological. A quality read.

2 people found this helpful

Barry

Ok

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

God read

B G Salisbury

Highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

Very interesting book. Highly recommended.

plinio_1959

un classico della paleontologia

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on January 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Un classico che ogni paleontologo dovrebbe avere nella sua libreria. Lo stile di Gould, come al solito, non delude, presentando teorie scientifiche e concetti complessi senza perder la leggerezza tipica di un libro divulgativo. Sebbene alcuni dei concetti esposti siano ad oggi stati aggiornati da studi scientifici più approfonditi, Wonderful Life rimane una delle più dettagliate raccolte di informazioni sulla straordinaria fauna cambriana degli Scisti di Burgess. Un argomento del genere, che potrebbe sembrare destinato a un pubblico di specialisti, in realtà ha un’importanza enorme dal punto di vista del significato che la fauna cambriana ha per tutta la storia successiva del regno animale. Uno dei concetti che Gould fa comprendere meglio è il fatto che mai prima e dopo, nella storia evolutiva dei phyla animali, ci sia stata una tale innovazione in termini di differenti tipologie di piani anatomici. Insomma, un libro da non perdere.

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Jen D.

Very good, informative book about a lesser known (but fascinating) topic!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 8, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is very detailed and informative (very thorough). It does have pictures (a few) but is written such that a young teen can enjoy it. The kid's feedback is that it is extremely interesting! A more obscure subject (interest peeked after a Nature of Things with David Suzuki episode) - it's been well received and enjoyed.

One person found this helpful

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