Wonderful LifeS. Gould
Wonderful Life
by S. Gould
6mentions
3recommended by
6HN commenters
2016–2024first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
"Wonderful Life" by Stephen Jay Gould. It might have only been a few paragraphs, but he explained that "Survival of the fittest" is not really quite how evolution works. "Survival of the fittest" implies that species…
on “Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?” ↗Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould is a lovely book about many strange organisms from this same time period. It's wild that these alien creatures were just wandering around living out their lives for millions and millions…
on “500M-Year-Old 'Alien Fish Taco' Was Among First Creatures with Jaws” ↗If anyone is interested in arguments about winding back the clock and replaying evolution, I highly recommended Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life."
on “What happens when you put evolution on replay?” ↗The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a book called 'Wonderful Life' about the Cambrian Explosion, when mutlicellular life really got cranking. Basically at that time the ecological slate was clean, and an enormous diversity of organisms developed very quickly. All the…
on “What made Xerox PARC special? Who else today is like them?” ↗And for the Cambrian Explosion, although somehow dated now, Gould's Wonderful Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderful_Life_(book)
on “What sparked the Cambrian explosion?” ↗I also recommend the new book Improbable Destinies by Jonathan Losos, which has a big discussion on convergent evolution and the role of "replaying the tape" - it refers back a lot to Gould's book "Wonderful Life" and what new genome sequencing is revealing and how it relates to what he got right and/or got wrong and/or how he was misunderstood.
on “What happens when you put evolution on replay?” ↗