ISBN10: 0224050443, ISBN13: 9780224050449, [publisher: Jonathan Cape] Hardcover 372 pages. I have struggled, harder and more explicitly than for anything else in my life as a writer, to develop a distinctiv e and personal form of essay to treat great scientific issues in the context of biography -and to do so not by the factual chronol ogy of a life's sorrows and accomplishments (a noble task requiri ng the amplitude of a full book), but rather by the intellectual synergy between a person and the controlling idea of his life. Fr om the Preface. Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern st andard by which popular science writing is judged. Ever since the late 1970's, his monthly essay in NATURAL HISTORY and his full-l ength books have bridged the yawning gap between science and wide r culture. In this fascinating new collection of essays, Gould ha s once again applied biographical perspectives to the illuminatio n of key scientific concepts and their history, ranging from the origins of palaeontology to modern eugenics and generic engineeri ng. As always, these essays brilliantly display his gift for coll oquial and vivid explanation and include fascinating oddities fro m the natural world and the printed world.
[Wellington, New Zealand] [Publication Year: 2000]