Bully for Brontosaurus is another excellent book of essays by Stephen Jay Gould, who for decades wrote monthly columns for Natural History magazine. Gould, generously, takes to updates his essays in preparation for republication in anthologies like Bully. Such updates may take the form of a footnote, an afterward, or (sometimes parenthetical) phrases within the body of an essay, e.g. “see essay #14 for more on this topic.” The end result is collection of essays which seem thoughtfully curated, even thought the topics vary (very much).
One feature which differentiates Bully from many other Gould books is its evident rootedness in a particular era, in this case the Cold War era*. This is unusual for a few reasons, foremost among them the fact I have read at least 4 other Gould books from this time and it never occurred to me.
* Are we amidst another one? “#TRUMPUTIN”?
Because Gould’s essays span the history of science and geological time, the original writing/publication time is not always evident, often irrelevant. Some essays date themselves, for example those concerning contemporary scientific expeditions (e.g. essays 34,35), legal cases (essay 30), and technologies (essay 4). Other essays lack such a historical context. For example, essays 18 and 19 relate taxonomic disputes about monotremes (e.g. platypus) which were settled by ~1978. As such, Gould could have written these essays any time from 1978 through present day, without necessarily impacting readers. Similarly, essay 11 relates taxonomic disputes about “proto-horses,” settled by the 1950s.
Specifically, Gould’s occasional commentary relating to nuclear weapons places the publication of this book in the Cold War era. For example, in the book’s Prologue* Gould says: “The megatonnage of the extraterrestrial impact that probably triggered the late Cretaceous mass extinctions has been estimated at 10,000 times greater than all the nuclear bombs now stockpiled on earth (pg 17).” He continues to describe the planets slow recovery after that event, which he says occurred at at planetary, not human time scales, and continues: “At this scale, we are powerless to harm; the planet will take care of itself, our puny foolishness notwithstanding.”
* Written prior to 1991.
In isolation, the comparison of the cometary extinction event to the nuclear stockpile may seem like nothing more than an effective, powerful analogy for an otherwise inconceivable event. But there are several cases which indicate, to me, Gould had recently contemplated the mortality (fatality) of the human race closely. Maybe this is something an evolutionary biologist is bound to consider-after all, they study the (differential) survival and exinction of species. Yet, his commentary seems less theoretical than real:
[W]e, pitiful latecomers in the last microsecond of our planetary year [an imaginary unit of planetary time, like “dog years”], are stewards of nothing in the long run (pg 18);
But then again, I could be interpolating. The aforementioned comments also fit into the context of Gould’s thoughts about environmental ethic. It could just be me anticipating a loud blast, followed by the voice of the narrator from Beneath The Planet of The Apes, pronouncing our planet’s fate: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”
(God, such a good movie.)
Back on track, Tommy. Whether a slow death by environmental neglect (or destruction), or a quick death by mass * ((speed of light)^2)) (i.e. E=MC^2), the fate of the species is on the author’s mind. And his sober commentary is most fascinating.
Consider some established facts:
- Our planet is 4.5 billion years old
- >99% of all species that ever lived are extinct (pg 177).
- We (Homo sapiens) have lived for about 200,000 years.
- Our common ancestor with teleosts (bony fish) lived about 300 million years ago (pg 175).
Given those facts, and considering this quotation-“At this scale, we are powerless to harm; the planet will take care of itself, our puny foolishness notwithstanding”-could nuclear power not have crossed Gould’s mind, even if his immediate concern was conservation?
Having just read Susan Sontag’s essay Against Interpretation, I’m not going to belabor this theory any further-maybe Gould used environmental conservation as a cipher for nukes, maybe not. Instead, I’ll pivot and generalize how distinctly human it is to interpret, which is to theorize.
Many of Gould’s essays revisit debunked theories, from frivolous to profound, simplistic to abstruse, lay to academic. Sometimes, lines blur.
However blurry, Gould emphasizes the important that one can test a theory. The scientific method-a procedure of observation and measurement-must validate a theory. It can’t just “seem right”; it must “seem right,” and attempt to measure rightness.
Yet, in so many cases it seems the desire to understand for information to be empirical is dwarfed by a desire to condense information into tautologies-quick, memorable, and conceivable maxims; essentially, slogans.
To some extent, the act of believing a theory which cannot be measured, or believing a theory without understanding its measurement, impoverishes the theory. It takes its richness for granted.
Consider how much this statement from William Jennings Bryan impoverishes the scientific accomplishments of Newton, et al.
“Do we not suspend or overcome the law of gravitation every day? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we temporarily overcome one of the most universal of natural laws and yet the world is not disturbed” (pg 420).
He leverages an impoverished notion of gravity to validate (immeasurable) biblical miracles, miracles which have been simultaneously enriched and impoverished over time as we’ve debated such features as their literality.
This theme applies to contemporary anti-science, anti-reality movements, like climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers, but Gould’s favorite to rail on is Creationism. In Bully, he runs the gamut-from its origins, to Scopes, to Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion on the 1987 case “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act” (essay 30). He characterizes Scalia’s dissent as a misunderstanding of evolution-specifically, a fixation on what evolution seems to convey about the origin of life: that humans began as blue-green algae. (Not consistent with many of our image of a mankind which was created “in God’s image.”) The implication is there, I’ll grant, but it is not the primary argument; the primary argument is genetic modification occurs via natural and sexual selection in local populations. This is “settled science,” confirmed in so many ways, including study of the geological record (essay 11, among others).
I can safely say, most essays in Bully do not classify as controversial, but in any case contrary views should not diminish Gould’s wonderful storytelling. My favorite story, “The Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier clone” (essay 10), depicts Gould’s stubborn, academic quest to answer this question: Why, for a century, have academic essays and textbooks alike compared the size of Hyracotherium (horse species) to fox terrier? The answer: the comparison has been copied, without much modification, from one source to another for so many decades-like much information in textbooks.
Some other essays I feel inclined to mention, if only as marginalia, include”Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples” (essay 8), and not just for it’s clever name, which concerns various features of male and female anatomy which exist in one or the other, with or without utility, simply as artifacts of a shared embryonic pathway. Essay 15 describes Petrus Camper’s identification of the “facial angle” as a feature of Greek sculpture and measure of beauty… oh, and a eugenic metric. Essay 17 comments on humans’ difficulty recognizing random distributions (and beautifully describes glow worm caves in New Zealand). Essay 21 is an essay about N.S. Shaler throwing shade on a janitor in a note to Louis Agassiz, which Gould found “In a Jumbled Drawer” (the title of the essay). Lastly, essay 25 concerns the projection of comets onto (way too) many facets of planetary history by William Whiston.
The high quality of Gould’s writing is undeniable, but I admire his empathy more than his writing. Each essay is ostensibly about a topic in natural history, but the anthology represents a transmutation of the parts into a whole, which in turn represents Gould’s attempt to understand the world from every perspective. His treatment of William Whiston is a great example. Whiston was a contemporary of Isaac Newton-“soul mate,” Gould says-whose “cometary theories” in the 17th century sought to explain key events Genesis. Today, much of what he says sounds silly, but Gould is quick to chide our judgment of a scientist of the 17th century:
“Such an assessment of Whiston seems singularly unfair and anachronistic. How can we justify a judgment of modern taxonomies that didn’t exist in the seventeenth century? We dismiss Whiston because he violated ideals of science as we now define the term. But, in Whiston’s time, science did not exist as a separate domain of inquiry [from religious/philosophical studies]” (pg 376).
I will end with an existential quotation of G.K. Chesteron which Gould uses in Bully: “Art is limitation: the essence of every picture is the frame.” Consider it in the context of tautologies, of news, of academic and statistical studies, so on. There is so much information out there and humans have a heck of a hard time distinguishing random distributions from patterns (essay 17).
Careful with the meaning you make of things.
9/10
ISBN # 039330857X