I Have Landed: Ultimate Reflections in Natural History

by Stephen Jay Gould

In this collection of essays from "Natural History" magazine, Gould has 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 Fracastoro in the 16th century and Isabelle Duncan's 19th-century attempt at reconciling scripture and paleontology to Freud's weird speculations about human phylogeny and recent creationist attacks on the study of evolution. The essays 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.

• ISBN10: 0224062999
• ISBN13: 9780224062992
• Publish Date: 13 June 2002 (first published 1 January 2002)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 22 April 2005
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Interesting little tour through Gould’s essays although there was nothing here I strongly connected with. The best was definitely last, “The Great Physiologist of Heidelberg,” on the misguided classifications of race and the consequences of unfortunate ethnocentrism, even by those, like the eponymous Tiedemann, who’ve tried to correct the mistakes.