Author : Maury Klein
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 644 pages
File Size : 12,37 MB
Release : 1986
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780801857713
Jay Gould was an individual who for a century has been singled out as the most unscrupulous of the turn-of-the-century robber barons. In this splendid biography Maury Klein paints the most complete portrait of the notorious Gould ever written. Klein's Gould is a brilliant but ruthless businessman who merged dying railroads into expansive, profit-making lines, including the giant Union Pacific. 40 illustrations.
Author : Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 46,47 MB
Release : 1990-09-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 0393245209
"[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."—James Gleick, New York Times Book Review High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
Author : Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 1460 pages
File Size : 31,84 MB
Release : 2002-03-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 0674417925
The world’s most revered and eloquent interpreter of evolutionary ideas offers here a work of explanatory force unprecedented in our time—a landmark publication, both for its historical sweep and for its scientific vision. With characteristic attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes the content and discusses the history and origins of the three core commitments of classical Darwinism: that natural selection works on organisms, not genes or species; that it is almost exclusively the mechanism of adaptive evolutionary change; and that these changes are incremental, not drastic. Next, he examines the three critiques that currently challenge this classic Darwinian edifice: that selection operates on multiple levels, from the gene to the group; that evolution proceeds by a variety of mechanisms, not just natural selection; and that causes operating at broader scales, including catastrophes, have figured prominently in the course of evolution. Then, in a stunning tour de force that will likely stimulate discussion and debate for decades, Gould proposes his own system for integrating these classical commitments and contemporary critiques into a new structure of evolutionary thought. In 2001 the Library of Congress named Stephen Jay Gould one of America’s eighty-three Living Legends—people who embody the “quintessentially American ideal of individual creativity, conviction, dedication, and exuberance.” Each of these qualities finds full expression in this peerless work, the likes of which the scientific world has not seen—and may not see again—for well over a century.
Author : Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 48,77 MB
Release : 2011-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 0674061616
Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this “full house” of variation, and not as the progress or degeneration of an average value, or single thing.
Author : Stephen Jay GOULD
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 11,88 MB
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 0674037847
In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould took the scientific world by storm with his paper on punctuated equilibrium. Challenging a core assumption of Darwin's theory of evolution, it launched the controversial idea that the majority of species originates in geological moments (punctuations) and persists in stasis. Now, thirty-five years later, Punctuated Equilibrium offers his only book-length testament on a theory he fiercely promoted, repeatedly refined, and tirelessly defended.
Author : Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 458 pages
File Size : 45,2 MB
Release : 2006-06-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 0393340406
The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits—of biology as destiny—dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."
Author : Greg Steinmetz
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 19,65 MB
Release : 2023-08-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1982107413
A gripping, “rollicking” (John Carreyrou, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood) biography of Jay Gould, the greatest of the 19th-century robber barons, whose brilliance, greed, and bare-knuckled tactics made him richer than Rockefeller and led Wall Street to institute its first financial reforms. Had Jay Gould put his name on a university or concert hall, he would undoubtedly have been a household name today. The son of a poor farmer whose early life was marked by tragedy, Gould saw money as the means to give his family a better life…even if, to do so, he had to pull a fast one on everyone else. After entering Wall Street at the age of twenty-four, he quickly became notorious when he paralyzed the economy and nearly toppled President Ulysses S. Grant in the Black Friday market collapse of 1869 in an attempt to corner the market on gold—an event that remains among the darkest days in Wall Street history. Through clever financial maneuvers, he gained control over one of every six miles of the country’s rapidly expanding network for railroad tracks—coming close to creating the first truly transcontinental railroad and making himself one of the richest men in America. American Rascal shows Gould’s complex, quirky character. He was at once praised for his brilliance by Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and condemned for forever destroying American business values by Mark Twain. He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, figuring Thomas Nast’s best sketches, paying Boss Tweed’s bail, and commuting to work in a 200-foot yacht. Gould thrived in an expanding, industrial economy in which authorities tolerated inside trading and stock price manipulation because they believed regulation would stifle the progress. But by taking these practices to new levels, Gould showed how unbridled capitalism was, in fact, dangerous for the American economy. This “gripping biography” (Fortune) explores how Gould’s audacious exploitation of economic freedom triggered the first public demands for financial reforms—a call that still resonates today.
Author : Edward J. Renehan Jr.
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 13,55 MB
Release : 2008-07-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0786722312
Though reviled for more than a century as Wall Street's greatest villain, Jay Gould was in fact its most original creative genius. Gould was the robber baron's robber baron, the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. In Dark Genius of Wall Street, acclaimed biographer Edward J. Renehan, Jr., combines lively anecdotes with the rich social tapestry of the Gilded Age to paint the portrait of the most talented financial buccaneer of his generation -- and one of the inventors of modern business.
Author : Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 431 pages
File Size : 17,46 MB
Release : 2011-10
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0674061624
Gould’s final essay collection is based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine—exactly 300 consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific discovery and the most personal book he ever published.
Author : Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 50,84 MB
Release : 2011-07-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 0307801411
"People of good will wish to see science and religion at peace. . . . I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis; but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict." So states internationally renowned evolutionist and bestselling author Stephen Jay Gould in the simple yet profound thesis of his brilliant new book. Writing with bracing intelligence and elegant clarity, Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of choosing between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean that accords dignity and distinction to each realm? At the heart of Gould's penetrating argument is a lucid, contemporary principle he calls NOMA (for nonoverlapping magisteria)--a "blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution" that allows science and religion to coexist peacefully in a position of respectful noninterference. Science defines the natural world; religion, our moral world, in recognition of their separate spheres of influence. In elaborating and exploring this thought-provoking concept, Gould delves into the history of science, sketching affecting portraits of scientists and moral leaders wrestling with matters of faith and reason. Stories of seminal figures such as Galileo, Darwin, and Thomas Henry Huxley make vivid his argument that individuals and cultures must cultivate both a life of the spirit and a life of rational inquiry in order to experience the fullness of being human. In his bestselling books Wonderful Life, The Mismeasure of Man, and Questioning the Millennium, Gould has written on the abundance of marvels in human history and the natural world. In Rocks of Ages, Gould's passionate humanism, ethical discernment, and erudition are fused to create a dazzling gem of contemporary cultural philosophy. As the world's preeminent Darwinian theorist writes, "I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between . . . science and religion."
