Volume 25, Number 9 · June 1, 1978
The Ape Who Never Grows Up
By J.Z. Young
Ontogeny and Phylogeny
by Stephen Jay Gould
Harvard University Press/Belknap, 501 pp., $18.50
It is curious that through the centuries men seem to have been more interested in studying the heavens than things on Earth. Even when they did begin to investigate terrestrial matters it was the inorganic that they studied first. Exact knowledge about living creatures has come last of all among the sciences. So it has come about that Newton and his successors among physicists and chemists have usually been considered to be the only real scientists. Nor can we say that things have changed much recently. The use of high energies to break up atoms and to blow men to the moon is still acclaimed as the most fundamental form of inquiry. Man seems to have an urge to 'get to the bottom of things,' to break them up, and he continually expects to find 'ultimate' particles of which all are made. It may even be that there is some special property in our brains that makes it seem so obvious that such analysis is the most profound form of knowledge to which we should all aspire. Or is it the result of cultural and economic influences in the West over recent centuries?
Review, 2887 words
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