MetaFilter posts tagged with stephenjaygould

Fake fossils down through the ages

Kattullus — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:46:23 -0800

Stephen Jay Gould tells the story of the 18th Century German professor Beringer who published a book, Lithographiae Wirceburgensis in 1726 which purported to show remarkable fossils, including spiders in their web, copulating frogs and Yahweh written in Hebrew (high resolution images of the original plates: 1, 2, 3, 4) This turned out to be a fake but the conventional story of the humiliated Professor Beringer and his Lying Stones of Wurzburg is not as simple as the one usually retold in textbooks. And as Gould mentions fossil fakes are not a thing of the past.

"Science is an integral part of culture"

nickyskye — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:31:16 -0800

The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive, an online library dedicated to the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002). Includes an excellent selection of videos. And The Official Stephen Jay Gould Archive [still under development], which includes two of his books and his Harvard course online. The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive was created by Miguel Chavez, a student at Yuba College in Northern California. From The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive, links. Fun Steinberg cartoon in Gould's book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Darwin's Origin of the Species online at The Official Stephen Jay Gould Archive.

Gould's The Creation Myths of Cooperstown

Slithy_Tove — Sat, 10 May 2003 00:06:27 -0800

Stephen Jay Gould's classic essay, 'The Creation Myths of Cooperstown'. Doubleday, schmubleday. Baseball and evolution and why the sloppy beginnings of things tend to get tidied up when the official histories are written. This essay was picked as one of the Best American Essays of the [Twentieth] Century.

steve.wdc — Mon, 20 May 2002 12:22:00 -0800

The famous biologist and anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould died in his home today of cancer at the age of 60.

hanseugene — Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:38:19 -0800

Gould, earthworms and you: Stephen Jay Gould discusses the recent discovery that the human body has only about 1/4th of the DNA originally estimated. NYTimes op-ed piece. One of the best results of this discovery is that it sounds death knell of reductionist biology; as usual, the human body turns out to be more complicated than anyone could have imagined. ("Gee, we haven't explained life, the universe and everything? Gosh darnit!") I have always thought it was silly to ascribe artistic talent, criminal behaviour, musical aptitude or computer savvy to the foibles of some single gene. Now here's independent confirmation of that opinion...

So once again we find that we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become...