Rating: 
Summary: Marching forward? backward? . . . or just "diversifying"?
Review: After seeing that there were already some 40 or so reviews of this wonderful book, and having read it some years ago I was reluctant to add another. But, being a fan of Gould's magnificent "Wonderful Life" (1989) and seeing some negative, and misleading reviews of this particular book, I had to chime in. To begin with, Gould's books are highly readable and enjoyable as he has a great capacity to relate objective science to the subjective world. "Full House" will be challenging to you if you do not already understand or buy into Darwinism. If not, you'll definitely take issue with his seemingly harsh conclusions (i.e. "Humans are here by the luck of the draw, not the inevitability of life's direction or evolution's mechanism" p.175). The book is about diversity and "the spread of excellence" on earth. Consequently, it puts man in his place (just another organism amongst many, and quite minor compared to bacteria) amongst greater geologic history; and this can be a bit difficult to swallow at first. But read on!
Utilizing baseball and the disappearance of .400 ave. hitting as one major example to illustrate the nature of evolution, Gould shows through statistics how one aspect of the game (hitting) has declined over time, while the rest (pitching & fielding) have increased in skill level. It all makes perfect sense. That's not to say one can't argue with him (although he's now dead), but Gould's contributions to evolutionary theory can be controversial to the unconverted - especially the religious (namely, Catholics & those with firmly held, comfortable beliefs in Manifest Desitiny). Gould (and most science) is directly opposed to this type of anthropocentric thinking; but not, however, traditional Deist beliefs in which God does not interfere with human evolution. In many regards, "Wonderful Life" and "Full House" comfortably fit into an older, more original Christianity - that of Gnosticism, in which the earth is a sort of abandoned proving ground. Gould conjectures: "...perhaps we are, whatever our glories and accomplishments, a momentary cosmic accident that would never rise again if the tree of life could be replanted from seed and regrown under similar conditions" p.18.
The premiss of "Full House" is that "progress is, nonetheless, a delusion based on social prejudice and psychological hope engendered by our unwillingness to accept the plain (and true) meaning of the fourth Freudian revolution" p.20. Later on, Gould reiterates: "The vaunted progress of life is really random motion away from simple beginnings, not directed impetus toward inherently advantageous complexity" p.173. He could be wrong. He could be right. He does however back up his ideas with plenty of observable proofs, experience (he was a paleontologist), and statistics - all in Gould's entertaining and thought-provoking signature style. The fact is, neither Gould nor Darwin nor Freud is saying a person ought to stop striving for excellence - in fact, they're encouraging it! Reading a book like "Full House", or "Wonderful Life" is challenging to many commonly held assumptions about human life, and thus, potentially upsetting, but ultimately uplifting in my view. One optimistic conclusion that may be drawn from this seemingly dismal and dry evolutionary theory is that our life is a unique, wonderful opportunity unparalleled, and definitely not the norm of things.
If the above quotes from the book sound intriguing to you, and you're craving more information, then I highly recommend you try both "Full House" and it's paradigm shifting predecessor, "Wonderful Life". I guarantee that you'll come away with a mind more open, and thoughtful about evolution and life than ever before. Happy reading!
Rating: 
Summary: I Miss Him Already!
Review: As a long time fan of Professor Gould's essays, I hoped that this full-length work would be equally entertaining and informative. I was not let down. "Full House" contains the author's usual combination of wit, insightful anecdotes, encyclopedic knowledge of biology/geology/paleontology, and wonderful literary style. The reading was all the more poignant in the light of Professor Gould's recent death, and I could not help but wonder if science will ever again have such a brilliant spokesman.Rather than tackling a specific aspect of natural history, in "Full House" Gould strives to make a philosophical point about the way we (mis)understand systems: "The variation of a `full house' or complete system should be treated as the most compelling `basic' reality; averages and extreme values (as abstractions and unrepresentative instances respectively) often provide only partial, if not downright misleading, views of a totality's behavior" (p. 100). The full meaning and greater implications of this statement are difficult to understand at first reading, which is precisely why Gould has written an entire book (see comments below) on the subject. To breath some life into this statistical idea, Gould discusses two main subjects: the disappearance of .400 batting averages from professional baseball, and the fallacy that evolution is inherently directed towards creating more complex organisms, with Man as the ultimate culmination. Baseball and evolution? Yes, these are admittedly disparate topics, but I liked the variety. After all, I believe the crux of this work is the general statement about our understanding of systems, not one system in particular. So be warned, if you're seeking a book strictly about biology or natural history, this is probably not the best choice. Much of the criticism here on Amazon focuses on the book's unnecessary length and its redundancy. I must agree that there were several points at which Gould seems to be repeating himself. It feels like he had more to say than he could possibly fit into his usual essays, but not quite enough for an entire book. I wonder if he felt compelled (either by himself or maybe his publisher) to expand the work to at least 200 pages. Depending on your interest in the material, the length might be a real drawback, or simply a slight nuisance. I was not particularly bothered and finished the book in two days. Even if you are not fully persuaded by Gould's argument, or if the book seems unnecessarily long, I hope you will enjoy the reading. Gould is (alas, was) a brilliant and engaging writer, in my humble opinion. The proper anecdote, allusion, or quotation was always at his fingertips and he knew when to make the reader laugh. (I could not restrain my chuckles as he lambasted M. Scott Peck's fatuous equation of love and evolution [p. 27]). This book contains a fine mix of intriguing content and great writing. I would recommend it to anyone seeking a quick read that will stretch the brain a bit.
Rating:
Summary: Full House: The Spred of Excellence from Plato to Darwin
Review: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin written by Stephen Jay Gould is a book that is anthropocentic in view, but nonetheless, eloquently argumentive for the new paradigm of progress in which variety, not complexity, is the true measure of excellence. Gould is a master at writing about science, an explainer of difficult ideas and concepts, bringing a wealth of history in his writing for a well gounded in fact argument. Contentious and polemics are just two of Gould's passionate, but eloquent techniques for getting your attention. As you read this book you'll begin to understand why Gould is so popular as a writer... he's a wonderful storyteller. "Full House" takes the reader on a journey to reconceptualize our view of natural reality in a fundamental way... making the argument... that variation is the ultimate reality of excellence as a function shaped by selection. Gould gets a little anecdotal as he works his arcana into his arguments, making the reading go by quickly, but more importantly you are learning all along. Yes, if you've read a lot of Gould's work you'll read many points that Gould has brought to the table before. This being said, these are reconceptualized here, as Gould shows you what we intuitively know to be true. The dare-devilish humor and wit of Gould are evident in this work, bringing the reader along the thought-trail as he transcends one paradigm to another with fervor and intelligence. This is a well written book as all of Gould's work... unintimidating with masterful storytelling technique.
Rating:
Summary: Full House: The Spred of Excellence from Plato to Darwin
Review: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin written by Stephen Jay Gould is a book that is anthropocentic in view, but nonetheless, eloquently argumentive for the new paradigm of progress in which variety, not complexity, is the true measure of excellence. Gould is a master at writing about science, an explainer of difficult ideas and concepts, bringing a wealth of history in his writing for a well gounded in fact argument. Contentious and polemics are just two of Gould's passionate, but eloquent techniques for getting your attention. As you read this book you'll begin to understand why Gould is so popular as a writer... he's a wonderful storyteller. "Full House" takes the reader on a journey to reconceptualize our view of natural reality in a fundamental way... making the argument... that variation is the ultimate reality of excellence as a function shaped by selection. Gould gets a little anecdotal as he works his arcana into his arguments, making the reading go by quickly, but more importantly you are learning all along. Yes, if you've read a lot of Gould's work you'll read many points that Gould has brought to the table before. This being said, these are reconceptualized here, as Gould shows you what we intuitively know to be true. The dare-devilish humor and wit of Gould are evident in this work, bringing the reader along the thought-trail as he transcends one paradigm to another with fervor and intelligence. This is a well written book as all of Gould's work... unintimidating with masterful storytelling technique.
Rating: 
Summary: Good stuff, bad format! OR Why cheetahs don't run marathons!
Review: Having read many of Stephen Jay Gould's collections of essays with much satisfaction, I was quite excited to try him in the book-length format of "Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin," expecting it to allow him more room for deeper investigation and fuller development of his "excellent" ideas. Instead, 230 pages allowed Gould, one of science's foremost essayists, to be more exhausting than exhaustive. His topic is interesting and important: how misconceptions about systems and distorting mental representations of them cause false perceptions of trends. Gould walks the reader through elementary statistical method and makes the abstract real and personal by recounting his own harrowing experience with cancer. He then uses the well kept data of baseball to demonstrate the narrowing of over-all variability in a system being perceived as a directed trend, in this case "downward" as .400 hitting disappears. Gould then combats ideas of "progress" being inherent in natural evolution, explaining that since first life was of the simplest organization ("You can't expect a lion to jump out of the primordial soup"), things could only become MORE complex, not less so. Vast time has therefore delivered more sophisticated organization in some organisms as a result of natural selection, but this does not replace or repudiate life's bacterial beginnings, which Gould takes great joy in showing still "rule" our planet. Instead, the most complex of organisms, a group to which we of course belong but which would have and could have existed without us, only represent expanded statistical variability of the entire system. Finally Gould contrasts the inefficient and random nature of biological evolution with the swift and purposeful development of culture and argues for the elimination of the misleading term "cultural evolution." The most overarching theme is that while representations of systems with a single number or attribute can sometimes be useful, we must recognize that these constructs are of our creation and can be very distorting because they are less than the whole, the "Full House" of the title. Gould could have accomplished all of this in half as many pages as he presents to us in "Full House." The "book" suffers from two types of redundancy. The most annoying and inexplicable kind is simple repetitiveness, phrases and entire sentences used many times throughout, reminiscent of Homeric epic, and not typical of Gould. The other tautology found here is necessary for scientific journal writing, but tedious to the general reader. While I respect Gould's pride in not "dumbing-down" his work for the public and making them dig in and read hard, unless one is a sabermetrician (studying sport statistics) I am afraid a lot of this stuff is stupefying. When addressing the "German virus" that created the greats of classical music and wondering where the modern equivalents are, Gould asserts that popular demand of novel form has been unfair to latter-day composers of music because all forms have been exhausted. He then dismisses rock music. Perhaps he has tongue in cheek, but I suspect elitism and codgerism. Gould must recognize that society and technology make the music, and jazz, rock, and rap are certainly innovative, if not inherently progressive. Gould states in the introduction that "Full House" is a companion to "Wonderful Life," another book-length work of his. While I will next read this for his always fascinating ideas, I look forward to returning to the short essay format which made me a Stephen Jay Gould fan.
Rating:
Summary: not an essential read, but a pleasant one
Review: I come to the book partly as a result of a direct self-study on the issues of creation-evolution-design debate, and partly because i like SJG's writings. At this point i am rereading some of his collections of essays in order to psych myself up for the week or more that his 'brick' _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_ will take. I don't like baseball and had only skimmed this book previously, so for a couple of easy reading hours it occupied my mind. It is basically about how to think about statistics. Summed up on pg 169ff. "Life's necessary beginning at the left wall. This is a takehome message from the excellent example of the drunkard's walk, pg 149ff. Left wall's are 'no one can earn less than zero dollars', 'no one can live and weight less than 50 lbs'. but Bill Gates can make enough money to skew the income and wealth curves so they look like capital 'L's. "Stability throughout time of the initial bacterial mode", most of the world's biomass is bacteria, no you or me. "Life's successful expansion must form an increasingly right-skewed distribution", this is the reply to evolution as progressive complexity to eventually produce US, thinking, creative, human beings. We are the >.400 baseball score, we are the very few that prove the rule that the masses are bacteria. "The myopia of characterizing a full distribution by an extreme item at one end", "Causality resides at the wall and in the spread of variation: the right tail is a consequence, not a cause", The only promising way to smuggle progress back into such a system is logically possible, but empirically false at high probability" and "Even a parochial decision to focus on the right tail alone will not yield the one, most truly desired conclusion, the psychological impetus to our yearning for general progress-that is, the predictable and sensible evolution to domination of a creature like us. endowed with consciousness." It is not an earth-shaking book by any means, rather a collection of essays where the most interesting part is his explanation of dealing with cancer, which apparently is what he died from nearly 20 years after the first diagnosis, and the reasoning about statistics that started with his predicted death rates from it as he lay there in a hospital bed. The drunkards walk could have been greatly enlarged, so for instance, by the addition of multiple drunkards bumping into each other, thus temporary right walls. Much like the biosphere is a changing mosaic of different species and different individuals. But like all his essays, it is time well spent, not just to get a new example or more ways of handling data, but for the pleasant time with SJG and his excellent writing.
Rating:
Summary: Dissolving The Problem of Evolutionary "Progress"
Review: I had read a lot about Stephen Jay Gould, but had only read some of his essays, and never one of his book-length works, before a few weeks ago I noticed a copy of Full House at a sale of old stock from the local central library. The press on Gould has been particularly voluminous this year, after he died in May, aged 60, to the cancer he had evaded earlier in his life -- and so he had been higher on my list (you know, the list, the neverending, constantly shifting ranked order of titles of works you want to read, most of which are destined to remain keys to unexplored worlds at your own death). Finding the book was particularly fortuitous for me, however, since one of the big problems I have been wrestling with during the year has been why evolution should drive towards complexity; and I didn't even know, buying Full House, that this was the central question it addresses. As soon as I started, I realised how lucky the find was, and felt straight away that I was talking one-on-one with Gould about the problem; at every stage, he would anticipate my questions with his answers, as if I had been whispering doubts in his ear as he composed it. The book is really quite a bit longer than it needs to be to answer the question, in the end -- and it isn't long, a well-spaced 230 pages, with illustrations. The solution, in the grand theme of intellectual revolutions, is actually a dissolution -- an argument that it is a mistake to see evolution as driving anywhere at all. Complexity turns out to be something that results given enough free play in a randomly varying system, rather than a pre-ordained endpoint towards which the system is aimed. We have been misled, Gould argues, by the same anthropocentrism that saw us at the centre of the Ptolemaic universe, to view ourselves as a kind of endpoint of evolution -- when by any measure available, the humble bacteria remains the most successful form of life around. Bacteria is the most numerous form of life in terms of any number of measures: raw numbers of individuals, numbers of species, genetic range between different species, ubiquity in differing environments, and even, perhaps, biomass (the argument here relies on the empirically somewhat shaky speculation that bacteria prosper throughout at least the outer crust of the earth, fed by geothermal rather than solar energy -- an argument needed to get their biomass over that of plant life, which otherwise easily dominates due to the weight of the worlds forests). However, our anthropocentrism leads us to draw those quaint evolutionary sequences from single-celled through multi-celled, through plant, animal and finally human life, as if evolution in total is pushing in our direction -- as if it is progressing, when really what we have is simply variation away from the bacteria. Life cannot really get any simpler than the simplest bacteria, and so an increasing amount of variation could only result in an increasingly complex few forms of life, so long as they are adaptively successful -- like the drunk man's random walk between a wall (through which he cannot pass) and a gutter (into which he will fall), he's going to end in the gutter eventually, even if he never aimed there. Progress towards complexity, then, is a by-product of random variation given enough time, and so can be gotten out of local adaptational principles without adding anything at all that dictates an overall trend towards complexity. Pretty simple really, and made all the more clear by Gould's reverse example of the disappearance of 0.400 hitting in baseball, which is an example of variation shrinking over time, giving the illusion of a driving trend (the illusory trend being the decline of hitting skill). In addition to the substance of the book, I liked Gould's often celebrated knack for quoting cultural sources in the midst of scientific argument -- in Full House he drops Whitman, Shakespeare, the Bible, Peirce and many others like they are the air he breathes. The only thing that remains troubling for me is Gould's conjecture that if a replay of evolution were played, we might not end up with conscious life, because of the many chance events required. He does say that he argues independently for this claim elsewhere (I think the book is called Wonderful Life, from memory), and so I might have to check that out -- I recall seeing a headline the other day in one of the popular science journals that proclaimed precisely the reverse, however -- a principle of convergence that entails a universe with physical laws the same as our own will produce life, as if inevitably, every replay. It's a shame we don't have Gould around any more, to see what his own reaction would be.
Rating:
Summary: Some very good points - if a bit strained philosophically
Review: It is sad that Dr. Gould was taken away so soon. He always made interesting points, offered some startling insights, and was generally fun - he was even acerbic in a fun way. He wrote this book for the general audience, of which I am a part. I cannot hope to challenge his or even approve of his professional points. I don't really have the training. But I can offer impressions. It seems to me that when he is talking about science he is very good and gave me quite a bit to think about. Honestly, he gave me some new views on distributions and natural selection that will stick with me. I found his sociological and philosophical conclusions drawn from these observations to be somewhat strained and overburdened his evidence a bit. He really doesn't address the concept of decadence much as it relates to the dying out of things. For example, baseball could very well be played better than ever and yet not be played as well as it could be because of secondary desires such as home runs instead of base hits. What fans want to see leads to a selection in a style of play that pleases them and brings in money. Then money is the point of the game and not pure excellence in play. Therefore, the best athletes of all time could be playing the game and yet their style of play would be less effective than it could be because of what the fans want to see. But wouldn't a style that led to more wins be adopted? Certainly, no one would adopt a losing strategy. But maybe the optimal difference is only slight but pleasing the fans brings in so much more money that it changes the way everyone plays the game. Football did this to make their game a passing game - which fans like more. Clearly, with the rules and styles all supporting the pass, no team can be based primarily on the run as they used to be. Anyway, the book has some very interesting points to make, it isn't a difficult read, and I think you will get some good food for thought. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for Content & Substance, 4 for Style
Review: Professor Gould has made a powerful argument in his usually convincing manner. The book presents a strong case against the popular anthropocentric view of natural evolution. Gould offers an extension to Darwin's natural selection by giving learned opinions on statistical evidence (the disappearing of 0.400 batting average) and a philosophical amalgamation of logical deductions. The author's intelligence and knowledge shine through his articulate lather of collegiate vocabulary (some of which in Latin--that's the reason for the not-so-generous 4 stars.) Gould is an excellent science writter whose passion for his beloved field is self evident. I believe he too, as a human being, scholar and writer, is one of those rare points at the 'right wall' of extreme achievements. Three themes are particaularly noteworthy: variations (not complexity) breed excellence, natural selection implies no progress, humans are not the epitome of life in the universe but merely an actualization of an improbable chance in evolution. Some readers may appreciate his obvious exclusion of religious counterpoints; an argument, however, could be made that such otherwise inclusion of an diametrically opposing view would have shown academic well roundedness. The book is an intellectually entertaining work. If a reader is open to a paradigm shift, Gould is likely the author to do the shifting. His recent death is our national loss.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for Content & Substance, 4 for Style
Review: Professor Gould has made a powerful argument in his usually convincing manner. The book presents a strong case against the popular anthropocentric view of natural evolution. Gould offers an extension to Darwin's natural selection by giving learned opinions on statistical evidence (the disappearing of 0.400 batting average) and a philosophical amalgamation of logical deductions. The author's intelligence and knowledge shine through his articulate lather of collegiate vocabulary (some of which in Latin--that's the reason for the not-so-generous 4 stars.) Gould is an excellent science writter whose passion for his beloved field is self evident. I believe he too, as a human being, scholar and writer, is one of those rare points at the 'right wall' of extreme achievements. Three themes are particaularly noteworthy: variations (not complexity) breed excellence, natural selection implies no progress, humans are not the epitome of life in the universe but merely an actualization of an improbable chance in evolution. Some readers may appreciate his obvious exclusion of religious counterpoints; an argument, however, could be made that such otherwise inclusion of an diametrically opposing view would have shown academic well roundedness. The book is an intellectually entertaining work. If a reader is open to a paradigm shift, Gould is likely the author to do the shifting. His recent death is our national loss.
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