Folio Books: Review of Full House by Stephen Jay Gould

Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin

by Stephen Jay Gould

Three Rivers Press, New York
1996; first paperback edition 1997
Bibliography, index; 244 pages

The theme of Full House is variation: variation in the length of time people live after being diagnosed with cancer, variation in hitters' averages in baseball, and the full range of variation in life on earth. You could say that this book consists of variations on the theme of variation.

The first section of the book is a crash course in basic statistics. Scientists use statistics to summarise variation as best they can. Different statistical measures -- the mean, the median, the mode, and standard deviation -- are brought into play in the course of the book. Each measure has its strengths and weaknesses. The reader needs no prior knowledge since, as readers of The Mismeasure of Man will know, Stephen Jay Gould is particularly good at explaining statistics: how to interpret them, how they can be misused, how to spot fallacies. Throughout, he stresses that statistics are an abstraction and that variation is the reality.

Gould's overall aim is to show that the concept of "progress" in evolution, from primitive bacteria to complex, self-conscious Man, is a delusion arising from our own arrogance, our desire to see ourselves at the top of the evolutionary tree.

He uses as examples of the median and the mean his diagnosis with cancer in the early 1980s, the evolutionary bush of horses, and trends in baseball, adding some innovative statistics of his own to show that the decline in batting averages in the past fifty years is more apparent than real. (He reckons that batters are now so good that they are reaching the limit of human possibility.) In Part Four, "The Modal Bacter: Why Progress Does Not Rule the History of Life", he pulls it all together, arguing that bacteria, so disdained, are the most successful and most prevalent of all organisms on the planet.

In the last chapter Gould speculates on human limits, most interestingly in the creative arts, where, he feels, we may be reaching a point where further novelty or originality is not possible.

One of the reasons I like reading Stephen Jay Gould is that he leaves loopholes, something to think about or to disagree with. He doesn't claim omniscience, unlike some I could mention (those who write about science as if to say, "That's all there is to know, now you just run along and play."). Although Full House seems at times repetitious and slow, at the end of it I found myself furiously rummaging around for something I had read somewhere to poke a hole in one of his ideas: in this case the idea of absolute limits on human creativity; and found it in Bright Air, Brilliant Fire by Gerald Edelman, whose theories on things like memory and originality have a way of resurfacing whenever a discussion touches on the working of the human mind.

Neither was I convinced by the idea that baseball players (or cricketers or golfers or soccer players) are reaching the limits of human capability, or that the concept of absolute limits in those kinds of sports has any meaning at all. There's more luck in sport than we like to think (unless our team is losing). More luck, and more variation in the characters and personalities of the players. Every once in a while along comes an original, some kind of a genius, someone utterly different from anyone who went before. For instance, there will never be another Garfield Sobers, all-rounder extraordinaire, whose blend of skill, cheeriness, sportsmanship, and risk-taking electrified the game of cricket. Nor another Muhammed Ali to brighten up boxing. Nor another Tiger Woods to galvanize golf. But in cricket alone, in the West Indies alone, we have had a procession of originals, and still they come. How to single anyone out? I choose Curtly Ambrose, now scoring surprising and useful runs at the limping tail end of a magnificent fast bowling career; who made it his business, when the recognised batting had collapsed, to stay at the wicket so that Chanderpaul could make his maiden test century; and who last year gave a hint of what makes a great sportsman truly great when he saluted the Australian crowd at the end of his last over of the series. Character matters in cricket even more than skill, which is why cricket is the greatest game of all.

Such is the aftermath of reading Stephen Jay Gould. One way or another, it happens every time.

M.A., Nov 21, 1997

Click on any of the Stephen Jay Gould titles below to order from Amazon (discounted prices on Amazon at time of writing are in bold):

Full House, 244 pages, Three Rivers Press, paperback, US$14.00 ($11.20)

Questioning the Millennium, subtitled "A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown", 1997, Harmony Books: A Division of Crown Publishers, Inc. Hardcover, US$17.95 ($12.57)

The Flamingo's Smile, 1985, WW Norton & Co.; a collection of essays on evolution and natural history. Paperback, US$14.95 ($11.96)

Wonderful Life, 1989, WW Norton & Co.; A full-length account of the discovery and analysis of the fossils of the Burgess Shale. Paperback, US$13.95 ($11.16)

Eight Little Piggies, 1993, WW Norton & Co.; a collection of essays on evolution and natural history. Paperback, US$12.95 ($10.36)

The Mismeasure of Man, 444 pages, WW Norton & Co; updated edition, 1996; a full-length and thorough debunking of racist theories of IQ. The first edition was published in 1981 and was written to refute theories of racial differences in intelligence by going back to the original figures and re-analysing the statistics. The updated edition is expanded to take care of The Bell Curve, with a new introduction, and five essays added at the end. Statistical fallacies are explained with clarity and in depth; includes discussions of factor analysis and various sources of bias, conscious and unconscious. Paperback, US$13.95 ($11.16)

The Panda's Thumb, 1980, WW Norton & Co.; a collection of essays on evolution and natural history. Paperback, US$12.95 ($10.36)

Ever Since Darwin (first published 1977, this reissue 1992), WW Norton & Co.; Gould's first collection of essays on evolution and natural history. Paperback, US$11.95 ($9.56)