Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Infobox Book


name =Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
author =Stephen Jay Gould
genre =Non-fiction, Science
publisher =Harmony Books
release_date =September 29, 1998
pages =422
isbn =ISBN 0-609-60141-5
preceded_by =Dinosaur in a Haystack
followed_by =The Lying Stones of Marrakech

"Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms" (1998) is the eighth volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were culled from his monthly column "The View of Life" in "Natural History" magazine, to which Gould contributed for 27 years. The book deals, in typically discursive fashion, with themes familiar to Gould's writing: evolution and its teaching, science biography, probabilities and common sense.

Contents

• Introduction
• Pieces of Eight: Confession of a Humanistic Naturalist
  1. ART AND SCIENCE
     1. The Upwardly Mobile Fossils of Leonardo's Living Earth
     2. The Great Western and the Fighting Temeraire
     3. Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly
  2. BIOGRAPHIES IN EVOLUTION
     4. The Clam Stripped Bare by Her Naturalists, Even
     5. Darwin's American Soulmate: A Bird's-Eye View
     6. A Seahorse for All Races
     7. Mr. Sophia's Pony
  3. HUMAN PREHISTORY
     8. Up Against a Wall
     9. A Lesson from the Old Masters
     10. Our Unusual Unity
  4. OF HISTORY AND TOLERATION
     11. A Cerion for Christopher
     12. [http://web.archive.org/web/20010827220028/citd.scar.utoronto.ca/ANTAO1/A01Readings/6.html The Dodo in the Caucus Race]
     13. The Diet of Worms and the Defenestration of Prague
  5. EVOLUTIONARY FACTS AND THEORIES
     14. [http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html Non-Overlapping Magisteria]
     15. Boyle's Law and Darwin's Details
     16. The Tallest Tale
     17. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_n1_v106/ai_19318724/print Brotherhood by Inversion (or, As the Worm Turns)]
  6. DIFFERENT PERCEPTIONS OF COMMON TRUTHS
     18. War of the Worldviews
     19. Triumph of the Root-Heads
     20. Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?
     21. Reversing Established Orders

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index

From "Publishers Weekly"

Reviews

* [http://www.renaissancemag.com/arts/books/default.asp?article=0899 Review] - by Graham Brack
* [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/15/bib/981115.rv054401.html Review] - by Jacqueline Boone
* [http://www.nobeliefs.com/Gould1.htm Review] - by Jim Walker
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_1_60/ai_59021341 Review] - by Jim Sullivan