topics: |  zoology | paleontology

The essays work their way through scientific history since the
mid-1800's, along the way stopping to sniff the flowers beside
E.E. Just's grave, Lord Kelvin's radioactive decay, and Gould's
own work with land snails in the Bahamas.

Contents
Prologue
   1. Zoonomia (and Exceptions)
      1. The Flamingo's Smile
      2. Only His Wings Remained

	although the idea of sexual cannibalism has a certain horrid
	fascination, it's a relatively rare event.

	For male mantises, the whole enterprise of mating is fraught with
	danger. Approach her from the front & you're likely to be history;
	you'll be greeted as prey and not partner. So male mantises approach
	(with caution) from behind, leap on the female's back, hold on tight -
	and leave rather quickly once it's all over. Even then, if he's not in
	quite the right position, the female will simply turn her head and
	bite his off. And then consume him, bit by bit, from the neck
	down. (There's a wonderful article on sexual cannibalism here.)

	Now, at first sight, this seems rather counter-productive - why kill
	and eat your mate right in the middle (or perhaps at the start) of
	mating? Certainly, the female is getting a nice fresh nutritious meal
	that would go a long way towards meeting the energy & nutrient
	requirements of forming and laying eggs. But surely that's not much
	good if her partner's now deceased? And there's nothing in it for him,
	is there?

	Gould points out that decapitated males are actually better in bed
	than their intact brethren: they perform harder and for longer, thus
	potentially transferring more of their sperm to the female. This is
	because much of the mechanical movement of mating is controlled by a
	nerve plexus at the end of the male's abdomen, and this plexus is in
	turn controlled by the cerebral ganglia (the 'brain') in the insect's
	head. Removing the head is followed by immediate, repeated, and
	prolonged mating behaviour.

	And there's certainly evidence from other species that duration of
	copulation is linked to the amount of sperm transferred - and many
	examples of males bearing gifts for their partner and through this
	obtaining a longer sex act. In hanging flies, for example, duration of
	mating is directly linked to the size of the 'nuptial gift', typically
	another insect: males who offer bigger gifts get to mate for longer
	and transfer more sperm to the female (and are less likely to be
	consumed themselves). In some species of hanging flies, the male first
	wraps his gift in silk - it takes a while to unwrap & in the meantime
	he's begun copulating.
      3. Sex and Size
      4. Living with Connections
      5. A Most Ingenious Paradox
   2. Theory and Perception
         6. Adam's Navel
         7. The Freezing of Noah
         8. False Premise, Good Science
         9. For Want of a Metaphor
   3. The Importance of Taxonomy
        10. Of Wasps and WASPs
        11. Opus 100
	    The one essay devoted to
	    his own work, titled "Opus 100", is the 100th essay Gould wrote
	    for Natural History. He starts by stating the two rules he
	    followed rigidly for the previous 99 essays: "I never lie to you,
	    and I strive mightily not to bore you". Then he states he's going
	    to risk the second by indulging in his favourite topic. It's
	    actually a very interesting and entertaining essay.
	    http://brummellblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/book-club-flamingos-smile.html

        12. Human Equality Is a Contingent Fact of History
        13. The Rule of Five
   4. Trends and Their Meaning
        14. Losing the Edge - Postscript: Strike Three for Babe
        15. Death and Transfiguration
        16. Reducing Riddles
   5. Politics and Progress
        17. To Show an Ape
        18. Bound by the Great Chain
        19. The Hottentot Venus
        20. Carrie Buck's Daughter
        21. Singapore Patrimony (and Matrimony)
   6. Darwinia
        22. Hannah West's Left Shoulder and the Origin of Natural Selection
        23. Darwin at Sea - and the Virtues of Port
        24. A Short Way to Corn
   7. Life Here and Elsewhere
        25. Just in the Middle
        26. Mind and Supermind
        27. SETI and the Wisdom of Casey Stengel
   8. Extinction and Continuity
        28. Sex, Drugs, Disasters and the Extinction of Dinosaurs
        29. Continuity
        30. The Cosmic Dance of Siva
	    False science - predictions of a seccond sun called Nemesis that
	    causes periodic extinctions, a predicted planet, Vulcan, between
	    mercury and the sun, and other false predictions in science.
Bibliography
Index

Evolution And The .400 Hitter
September 22, 1985
David Quammen
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CEFD8133BF931A1575AC0A963948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

David Quammen's most recent book is "Natural Acts," a collection of essays
on science and natural history.

THE FLAMINGO'S SMILE Reflections in Natural History. By Stephen Jay
Gould. Illustrated. 476 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $17.95.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD knows the value of using vivid particulars to communicate
abstract scientific ideas. When he writes about such biological oddities as
the inverted jellyfish Cassiopea, the praying mantis's mating habits, the
giant panda's extra "thumb" or the flamingo's inverted jaw, he does so with
a double purpose - to entertain us with fascinating details while teaching us
a few general concepts. Every oddity he describes stands on its own as a
discrete fact of nature, an individual mystery, as well as yielding an example
of some broader principle. This lively approach - "letting generality cascade
out of particulars," in his own words - is displayed again in his latest
collection of essays, "The Flamingo's Smile."

Mr. Gould himself is a rare and wonderful animal - a member of the endangered
species known as the ruby-throated polymath. He teaches biology and geology
and the history of science at Harvard University; writes a monthly column for
Natural History magazine (where most of these pieces appeared), and is a
leading theorist on large-scale patterns in evolution, an influential
historian of science, an incurable Gilbert-and-Sullivan buff, a shameless
punster and a serious baseball fan.

Somehow he also finds time for fieldwork on West Indian land snails,
especially Cerion, a protean genus on which he must surely be the world's
foremost authority. Of the snail research he writes: "Scientists don't
immerse themselves in particulars only for the grandiose (or self-serving)
reason that such studies may lead to important generalities. We do it for
fun. The pure joy of discovery transcends import." But the import,
transcended or not, is always there, both in what Cerion has to say about
evolution in general and in the writings that Mr. Gould offers to us lay
people. "The Flamingo's Smile" is as much fun as a Bahamian vacation (with
or without snail research), yet it is also a densely informative and
challenging book. These are not the sort of nature essays to be read late at
night in the last woozy minutes before sleep. You'll want the full use of your
brain.

In "Only His Wings Remained," a representative essay, he discusses the
phenomenon known as sexual cannibalism. Among mantises, black widow spiders
and a certain species of desert scorpion, the female sometimes makes a meal of
the male just after (or during, for the mantis) the act of mating. Some
biologists have argued that this mate-eating represents a programmed adaptive
strategy in which the male voluntarily offers his body as food to advance the
prospects of those eggs he has fertilized. Mr. Gould says that as tantalizing
as this notion may be, it is not well supported by evidence, and that
evolutionary reality often confounds the evolutionist's neat
expectations. "Sexual cannibalism with active male complicity should be
favored in many groups (for the conditions of limited opportunity after mating
and useful fodder are often met), but it has rarely evolved, if ever. Ask why
we don't see it where it should occur." Mr. Gould asks that question, then
answers that the evolution of life has been a succession of contingent
happenings, not a logically inevitable course of events, and that accidents of
history have often foreclosed possibilities. The male black widow might have
evolved self-sacrificial tendencies in a perfectly logical universe, but
evolution reflects history, not logic.

That evolutionary history is shaped by contingent events is one of the main
themes of "The Flamingo's Smile." Mr. Gould also reflects on the nature of
the scientific enterprise: "Science, in its most fundamental definition, is a
fruitful mode of inquiry, not a list of enticing conclusions. . . . Useless
speculation turns in on itself and leads nowhere; good science, containing
both seeds for its potential refutation and implications for more and
different testable knowledge, reaches out." Mr. Gould himself constantly
reaches out, groping (sometimes straining) for connections among disparate
ideas, phenomena and disciplines. Neoteny and Mickey Mouse. The Kinsey Report
and the taxonomy of wasps. The evolutionary principle of decreasing variations
within established patterns and the disappearance of .400 hitters in
baseball. I N the book's title essay, he discusses how and why the flamingo
has evolved a beak suited for eating upside down. To the flamingo he adds
Cassiopea, that inverted jellyfish, and an African catfish whose anatomy
hasn't yet made adjustment to its own upside-down habits. From this trio
Mr. Gould extracts a general point about the unrecognized contribution
Darwin's predecessor Lamarck made to evolutionary theory. That same busy essay
begins with an anecdote about Buffalo Bill and ends with the 14th-century
motto of an Oxford college. History, biology, geology and popular culture all
swirl about in Mr. Gould's mind and in his writing like the primordial gumbo
of Precambrian oceans.

Mr. Gould's tone in "The Flamingo's Smile" is chatty and informal. Of course
a chatty and informal tone is not to be confused with graceful
writing. Graceful these essays are not - there are too many digressions and
flat-footed reiterations, too little concern for pace and rhythm and economy
and polish. For all the precision of his thought and his research, his syntax
and language are sometimes confoundingly imprecise.

But never mind. Sleekness and polish seem almost irrelevant to the grand
evolutionary pageant that Stephen Jay Gould shows us. He is one of the
sharpest and most humane thinkers in the sciences.

UMBILICUS FINESSED The ample fig leaf served our artistic forefathers well as
a botanical shield against indecent exposure for Adam and Eve, our naked
parents in the primeval bliss and innocence of Eden. Yet, in many ancient
paintings, foliage hides more than Adam's genitalia; a wandering vine covers
his navel as well. If modesty enjoined the genital shroud, a very different
motive - mystery - placed a plant over his belly. In a theological debate more
portentous than the old argument about angels on pinpoints, many earnest
people of faith had wondered whether Adam had a navel. He was, after all, not
born of a woman and required no remnant of his nonexistent umbilical
cord. Yet, in creating a prototype, would not God make his first man like all
the rest to follow? Would God, in other words, not create with the appearance
of preexistence? In the absence of definite guidance to resolve this vexatious
issue, and not wishing to incur anyone's wrath, many painters literally hedged
and covered Adam's belly. A few centuries later, as the nascent science of
geology gathered evidence for the earth's enormous antiquity, some advocates
of biblical literalism revived this old argument for our entire planet. - From
"The Flamingo's Smile."