Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould,
Jonathan Cape in Britain, 拢18.99, ISBN 0 224 04472 9/Harmony Books in the
US $25, ISBN 0 517 70393 9
ALONGSIDE old favourites such as dinosaurs and ape-folk, Stephen Jay
Gould throws in plenty of fascinating beasties鈥攑entastomic parasites,
hermit crabs and the like鈥攊n Dinosaur in a Haystack. This is his
eighth collection of natural history essays on evolution, palaeontology and the
history of science, with a lightly edited text, supplemented with a few
postscripts and references. They show a more considered view than the average,
necessarily rushed, media piece, and are more up-to-date than most popular
books.
The essays vary from reportage and comment on other researchers鈥� work and on
his own, to more idiosyncratic personal subjects: why Edgar Allan Poe wrote on
shell-fish, the meaning of Frankenstein, and why snails were drawn
left-right reversed.
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Plainly Gould loves the whole organism. He doesn鈥檛 ignore the importance of
DNA sequences, but he points out that they alone don鈥檛 make a beast in a fine
assessment of Jurassic Park (book and film). The title essay discusses
how the fossil record inherently tends to give a false impression of gradual
extinction. The putative meteor that killed the dinosaurs will do more damage to
humanity鈥檚 self-importance, for our existence depends on this random cosmic
accident. Wider implications of evolutionary theory get an airing, especially
its abuse in eugenics and 鈥渟ocial Darwinism鈥�.
Gould praises museums as centres of evolutionary biology. He rightly adores
the restored Victorian ambience of the Natural History Museum in Dublin
(omitting the locals鈥� uncanny name, 鈥淭he Dead Zoo鈥�). How far should museums
abandon the real object for audiovisual glitz and virtual reality, pulling the
crowds at the cost of educational quality?
There are odd niggles: the word 鈥渄inosaur鈥� was coined in 1842, not 1840, and
Gould, who argues correctly that natural selection does not work for the benefit
of the species, says that it is for the individual鈥檚 benefit鈥攁n
oversimplification in this era of the selfish gene. Some of the hares he starts
seem too large to be 鈥渏ugged鈥� in this short format, but that鈥檚 the essayist鈥檚
privilege鈥攊t may provoke you to investigate further. If you鈥檝e read him
before, you鈥檒l know what to expect; if you haven鈥檛, try one of the very few
regular popularisers of evolution and palaeontology.