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Wonderful Life(book)

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Wonderful Life
Cover of the first edition
AuthorStephen Jay Gould
LanguageEnglish
SubjectsEvolutionary history of life
Burgess Shale
PublisherW. W. Norton & Co.
Publication date
1989
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (HardcoverandPaperback)
Pages347 pp.
ISBN0-393-02705-8
OCLC18983518
560/.9 19
LC ClassQE770.G67 1989
Preceded byAn Urchin in the Storm
Followed byBully for Brontosaurus

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of Historyis a 1989 book on theevolutionofCambrianfaunabyHarvardpaleontologistStephen Jay Gould.The volume madeThe New York TimesBest Seller list,[1]was the 1991 winner of theRoyal Society'sRhone-Poulenc Prize,theAmerican Historical Association's Forkosch Award, and was a 1991 finalist for thePulitzer Prize.Pulitzer jurorJoyce Carol Oateslater revealed the non-fiction jury had unanimously recommended the book for the prize, but the selection was rejected by the Pulitzer board.[2]Gould described his later bookFull House(1996) as a companion volume toWonderful Life.[3]

Summary[edit]

Charles Doolittle Walcott(1850-1927), who discovered theBurgess Shale,with his children Sidney Stevens Walcott (1892-1977), and Helen Breese Walcott (1894-1965).

Gould's thesis inWonderful Lifewas thatcontingencyplays a major role in theevolutionary history of life.He based his argument on the extraordinarily well preservedfossils of the Burgess Shale,a rich fossil-bearing deposit in Canada'sRocky Mountains,dating 505 million years ago.[4]Gould argues that during this period just after theCambrian explosionthere was a greater disparity of anatomical body plans (phyla) than exist today. However most of these phyla left no modern descendants. All of the Burgess animals, Gould argues, were exquisitely adapted to their environment, and there exists little evidence that the survivors were any better adapted than their extinct contemporaries.[5]

Gould proposed that given a chance to "rewind the tape of life" and let it play again, we might find ourselves living in a world populated by descendants ofHallucigeniarather thanPikaia(the ancestor of all vertebrates, or at least a close relative thereof). Gould stressed that his argument was not based onrandomnessbut rathercontingency,a process by which historical outcomes arise from an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states, where any change in the sequence alters the final result.[6]Becausefitnessfor existing conditions does not guaranteelong-term survival– particularly when conditions change catastrophically – the survival of many species depends more on luck than conventional features of anatomical superiority.[7]Gould maintains that, "traits that enhance survival during anextinctiondo so in ways that are incidental and unrelated to the causes of their evolution in the first place. "[8]Gould earlier coined the termexaptationto describe fortuitously beneficial traits, which areadaptivebut arise for reasons other than incremental natural selection.[9]

Gould regardedOpabinia– an odd creature with five eyes and frontal nozzle – as so important to understanding the Cambrian explosion that he wanted to call his bookHomage to Opabinia.[10]Gould wrote:

I believe thatWhittington'sreconstruction ofOpabiniain 1975 will stand as one of the great documents in the history of human knowledge. How many other empirical studies have led directly on to a fundamentally revised view about the history of life? We are awestruck byTyrannosaurus;we marvel at the feathers ofArchaeopteryx;we revel in every scrap offossil human bonefrom Africa. But none of these has taught us anywhere near so much about the nature of evolution as a little two-inch Cambrian oddball invertebrate namedOpabinia.[11]

Reception[edit]

Modern artistic rendering ofHallucigenia.

Wonderful Lifequickly climbed thenational bestseller listswithin weeks of publication.[12]It stimulated wide discussion regarding the nature of progress and contingency in evolution.

Gould's thesis was that if the history of life were replayed over again,human-level intelligencewould prove unlikely to ever arise again. The evolutionary biologistErnst Mayrargued that Gould, "made such contingencies a major theme inWonderful Life,and I have come to the conclusion that here he may be largely right. "[13]In his review, the biologistRichard Dawkinswrote that, "The view that he is attacking – that evolution marches inexorably towards a pinnacle such as man – has not been believed for 50 years."[14]

BiologistJohn Maynard Smithwrote, "I agree with Gould that evolution is not in general predictable.... Although I agree with Gould about contingency, I find the problem of progress harder.... I do think that progress has happened, although I find it hard to define precisely what I mean."[15]PhilosopherMichael Rusewrote that, "Wonderful Lifewas the best book written by the late Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist and popular science writer. It is... a thrilling story that Gould tells in a way that no one else could equal. "[16]

Some of the anatomical reconstructions cited by Gould were soon challenged as being incorrect, most notablySimon Conway Morris' 1977 reconstruction ofHallucigenia.[17]Conway Morris' reconstruction was, "so peculiar, so hard to imagine as an efficiently working beast" Gould speculated thatHallucigeniamight be "a complex appendage of a larger creature, still undiscovered."[18]It was later brought to light by paleontologists Lars Ramskold[19]and Hou Xianguang[20]that Conway Morris' reconstruction was inverted upside down, and likely belonged to the modern phylumOnychophora.[21]

The ultimate theme of the book is still being debated among evolutionary biologists today.[17]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^McDowell, Edwin (1989)."Book Notes."The New York TimesNov. 8.
  2. ^Joyce Carol Oates [@JoyceCarolOates](March 29, 2024)."this has happened several times--no award for fiction or drama because the judges' decisions were rejected by the Columbia committee. when I was a juror for the Pulitzer prize in non-fiction all three jurors chose Stephen Jay Gould's" Wonderful Life "--refused by the committee"(Tweet) – viaTwitter.
  3. ^Gould, S. J. (1996).Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin.New York: Harmony Books,p. 4.
  4. ^Ward, Peterand Joe Kirschvink (2015).A New History of Life.New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, p.125.
  5. ^Gould, S. J. (1989)Wonderful Life.New York: Norton, p.236.
  6. ^Gould, S. J. (1989).Wonderful Life.p.283.
  7. ^Gould, S. J. (2004)."The Evolution of Life On Earth."Archived2011-11-20 at theWayback Machine Scientific American290 (March): 97-98, 100.
  8. ^Gould, S. J. (1989)Wonderful Life.p.307.
  9. ^Gould, S. J.; Vrba, E. (1982),"Exaptation—a missing term in the science of form"(PDF),Paleobiology,8(1): 4–15,Bibcode:1982Pbio....8....4G,doi:10.1017/S0094837300004310,S2CID86436132.
  10. ^Knoll, A.H. (2004)."Cambrian Redux".The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth.Princeton University Press. p. 192.ISBN978-0-691-12029-4.Retrieved2009-04-22.
  11. ^Gould, S. J. (1989).Wonderful Life.p.136.
  12. ^Mehren, Elizabeth (1989)."The Cosmic Lottery."Los Angeles TimesNov. 28, pp. E1, E6.
  13. ^Mayr, Ernst (2001).What Evolution Is.New York: Basic Books, p.229.
  14. ^Dawkins, Richard(1990)."Hallucigenia, Wiwaxia and Friends."Sunday TelegraphFeb. 25; reprinted inA Devil's Chaplain.Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp.203-205.(ISBN978-0-7538-1750-6).
  15. ^Maynard Smith, John (1992)."Taking a Chance on Evolution."New York Review Books39 (May 14): 34-36.
  16. ^Ruse, Michael (2004)."Are we here by chance?"The Globe and Mail,Jan. 17.
  17. ^abBriggs, D. E. G.;Fortey, R. A.(2005)."Wonderful strife: systematics, stem groups, and the phylogenetic signal of the Cambrian radiation"(PDF).Paleobiology.31(2 (Supplement)): 94–112.doi:10.1666/0094-8373(2005)031[0094:WSSSGA]2.0.CO;2.S2CID44066226.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2016-08-12.Retrieved2016-12-04.
  18. ^Gould, S. J. (1989).Wonderful Life.New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,p. 157.
  19. ^Ramskold, L. (1992)."The second leg row of Hallucigenia discovered."Lethaia25 (2): 221-224
  20. ^Ramsköld L. and Hou Xianguang (1991)."New early Cambrian animal and onychophoran affinities of Enigma tic metazoans."Nature351(May 16): 225-228.
  21. ^Gould, S. J. (1992)."The reversal of Hallucigenia."Natural History101 (January): 12-20.

External links[edit]

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