I am a newbie to the writing of Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist who has attracted a sizable share of critics and detractors for his reasoned and outspoken views on our understanding of evolution, the history of science, humanism and  ‘Man’s’ place in the overall scheme of things. I find this book an ‘eyeopener’. Previously my education on the topic of evolution has been casual, incidental, social, something I’ve observed and absorbed as a product of living my own life, a book here and there, not formal or studied. Over the last ten years or so I have been more focused on the science of life, that defining ‘force’ which animates all organisms, what it is to be alive at a time when the traditional divisions between the sciences, particularly between physics, biochemistry, what has come to be known as ‘systems science’ and cell biology are beginning to dissolve and merge. Science continues down its more traditional pathways with its atomistic, reductionist, approach, which has dominated most of the accepted work up until today. Under the ‘old rules’ scientists utilize what we understand as the ‘scientific method’ in which they conduct ‘controlled’ experiments, repeatedly, to understand a particular action or process. Such demand for control leads them to break problems down into limited, often tiny ‘bits’, in which it is more easy to examine and evaluate a single isolated process with ‘confidence’. Others then assemble all these bits that they’ve learned into a theory of the whole. Traditionally conducted science works from the idea that we can understand the whole by studying a problem in its parts, often ever more minute. While this has proven to be a very valuable strategy, improving our understanding, shaping the way we act in the world and our technologies, it has also become more evident that this approach has left something out, that by limiting our examination of life in this way we are missing something essential. What actually constitutes life? The study of life’s origin and its evolution expose the shortcomings of relying on this approach alone. Continue reading →