I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History - Softcover

Gould, Stephen Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099749718 ISBN 13: 9780099749714

Publisher: Vintage, 2003

Synopsis

Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern standard by which popular science writing is judged. Throughout his work Gould has developed a distinctive and personal form of essay to treat great scientific issues in the context of biography. With I Have Landed, Gould once again applied biographical perspectives to the illumination of key scientific concepts and their history. Ranging from the discovery of the new scourge of syphilis by Fracastero in the sixteenth century and Isabelle Duncan's nineteenth-century attempt at reconciling scripture and palaeontology to Freud's weird speculations about human phylogeny and recent creationist attacks on the study of evolution. As always, the essays brilliantly illuminate and elucidate the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that have fuelled the enterprise of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders.

About this title

Review:

"Gems of evolutionary and natural-history wisdom" (Steven Rose Sunday Times)

"Not only one of the finest scientific minds of the later 20th century, but also one of its greatest polymaths... A wonderfully eclectic collection-a fine introduction to a brilliant mind" (The Times)

"It is hard to think of any one else with this combination of polymathic ability and of sheer cheek...original and controversial...quintessentially revealing" (Spectator)

"This is not a book for the bedside table. It sets the mind racing too wildly for sleep" (New Scientist)

"High in emotion and rich in historical perspective-one of our most gifted and productive science writers... He pioneered an explosion in the popularisation of science but has never been bettered in the process" (Robin McKie Observer)

Book Description:

'Matchless examples of the strengths of a historical imagination roaming across a scientific subject' Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0099749718
• ISBN 13: 9780099749714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432