I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History

Description

Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern standard by which popular science writing is judged. Throughout his work Gould has developed a distinctive and personal form of essay to treat great scientific issues in the context of biography. Here, Gould once again applied biographical perspectives to the illumination of key scientific concepts and their history, ranging from the discovery of the new scourge of syphilis by Fracastero in the sixteenth century and Isabelle Duncan's nineteenth-century attempt at reconciling scripture and palaeontology to Freud's weird speculations about human phylogeny and recent creationist attacks on the study of evolution. As always, the essays brilliantly illuminate and elucidate the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that have fuelled the enterprise of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders.

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University and the curator for invertebrate palaeontology in the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He is the author of over twenty books, and received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the MacArthur Fellowship. He died in May 2002.

Gems of evolutionary and natural-history wisdom -- Steven Rose * Sunday Times * Not only one of the finest scientific minds of the later 20th century, but also one of its greatest polymaths... A wonderfully eclectic collection-a fine introduction to a brilliant mind * The Times * It is hard to think of any one else with this combination of polymathic ability and of sheer cheek...original and controversial...quintessentially revealing * Spectator * This is not a book for the bedside table. It sets the mind racing too wildly for sleep * New Scientist * High in emotion and rich in historical perspective-one of our most gifted and productive science writers... He pioneered an explosion in the popularisation of science but has never been bettered in the process -- Robin McKie * Observer *