The Panda’s Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould (1980)

Summary: In this series of essays, Gould talks about evolution. He covers theories about dinosaurs, encephalic quotients and Larmarckian notions of taking your evolution by the horns so to speak. Gould emphasizes that science is quintessentially a human endeavor and there will always be biases towards on theory or another depending on the cultural climate.

Review: At first, I couldn’t stand this book. His essays would initially present something that made a good fair of sense and then towards the middle, Gould would say “However, that is totally wrong.” Or something like that. I was scared to finish reading this book because I felt like I was getting a lot of incorrect theory in my head, but the point of his essays are that there is merit in being reasoned in wrongness. The connections made by the method are sometimes incorrect, but the method has merit.

Rating: 7 radial sesamoids

Favorite part: “Species are the units of nature’s morphology.” P.213 This was the end sentence of a great chapter describing that species are subjective to the time they are in because species are changing and evolving all the time. I connected this to culture. And how there is no “authentic” culture, but what we can observe in the moment, and from our worldview.

Wine-pairing: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. This is an interesting book about a particular slant of evolution. One can see how our culture’s point of view can mesh well with this individualistic theory.