I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History

By Stephen Jay Gould

Book Overview

Here is bestselling scientist Stephen Jay Gould's tenth and final collection 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 has ever published,I Have Landedmarks the end of a significant chapter in the career of one of the most acclaimed and widely read scientists of our time. Gould writes about the themes that have defined his career, which his readers have come to expect and celebrate, casting new light upon them and conveying the ideas that science professionals exchange among themselves (minus the technical jargon). Here, of course, is Charles Darwin, from his centrality to any sound scientific education to little-known facts about his life. Gould touches on subjects as far-reaching and disparate as feathered dinosaurs, the scourge of syphilis and the frustration of the man who identified it, and Freud's "evolutionary fantasy." He writes brilliantly of Nabokov's delicately crafted drawings of butterflies and the true meaning of biological diversity. And in the poignant title essay, he details his grandfather's journey from Hungary to America, where he arrived on September 11, 1901. It is from his grandfather's journal entry of that day, stating simply "I have landed," that the book's title was drawn. This landing occurred 100 years to the day before our greatest recent tragedy, also explored, but with optimism, in the concluding section of the book. Presented in eight parts,I Have Landedbegins with a remembrance of a moment of wonder from childhood. In Part II, Gould explains that humanistic disciplines are not antithetical to theoretical or applied sciences. Rather, they often share a commonality of method and motivation, with great potential to enhance the achievements of each other, an assertion perfectly supported by essays on such notables as Nabokov and Frederic Church. Part III contains what no Gould collection would be complete without: his always compelling "mini intellectual biographies," which render each subject and his work deserving of reevaluation and renewed significance. In this collection of figures compelling and strange, Gould exercises one of his greatest strengths, the ability to reveal a significant scientific concept through a finely crafted and sympathetic portrait of the person behind the science. Turning his pen to three key figures-Sigmund Freud, Isabelle Duncan, and E. Ray Lankester, the latter an unlikely attendee of the funeral of Karl Marx-he highlights the effect of the Darwinian revolution and its resonance on their lives and work. Part IV encourages the reader-through what Gould calls "intellectual paleontology"-to consider scientific theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a new light and to recognize the limitations our own place in history may impose on our understanding of those ideas. Part V explores the op-ed genre and includes two essays with differing linguistic formats, which address the continual tug-of-war between the study of evolution and creationism. In subsequent essays, in true Gould fashion, we are treated to moments of good humor, especially when he leads us to topics that bring him obvious delight, such as Dorothy Sayers novels and his enduring love of baseball and all its dramas. There is an ardent admiration of the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan (wonderfully demonstrated in the jacket illustration), who are not above inclusion in all things evolutionary. This is truly Gould's most personal work to date. How fitting that this final collection should be his most revealing and, in conte

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609601431
• ISBN13: 9780609601433
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Fitting Epitaph To A Glorious Career In Science And Prose

"I Have Landed", Stephen Jay Gould's tenth - and last - collection of essays compiled primarily from his Natural History magazine column "This View Of Life" is his most personal, touching on themes as diverse as his own family history, the relevance of science to art - and vice versa, and the meaning of evolution. There is a brilliant essay describing how Vladimir Nabokov was a fine scientist as well as a literary prose artist, and how his scientific skill in studying and describing butterflies proved invaluable in his fictional observations of people and their behavior. Another splendid essay examines how Freud struggled to understand evolutionary theory and make use of it in his own pioneering work in psychoanalysis. There are also Gould's eloquent rebuttals against those determined to remove evolution as a vital part of science education written for both the general public and his fellow scientists. Yet his most profound, most universal writing is saved for his own family history and how it oddly is tied to the tragic terrorist attacks on the United States over a year ago.Stephen Jay Gould was our finest popularizer of science and among natural history's most eloquent essayists. His untimely demise at the relatively young age of 60 is a tragic loss not only to paleobiology and evolutionary biology, but to all of humanity. "I Have Landed" is a fitting epitaph to Gould's glorious careers in science and the art of letters.

Rich in observation and scientific insight

I Have Landed is the tenth and final collection of essays based on Gould's contributions to Natural History magazine, and provides over thirty writings that demonstrate his beliefs and scientific insights. From icebergs to the Andes, these are rich in observation and scientific insight and flavored with Gould's own particular spice of wry humor.

The tenth and final collection

I was a little bit disconcerted when I saw the title of this, Stephen Jay Gould's last collection of essays. I thought: has he anticipated his own sadly premature death with the metaphoric "I Have Landed" or is this a kind of melancholy coincidence, or perhaps I am reading into the title something different from what it warrants?As it turns out, "I Have Landed" is not a reference to the Lethe shore of the poet, but a reference to his grandfather's arrival at Ellis Island on September 11, 1901, exactly, to the day, one century before the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. It is from this coincidence that Gould embarks upon some musings that form the touchstone for this, his tenth and last collection of essays.He is a man who will be sorely missed, a complete original, at once the very embodiment of a meticulous scientist and an establishment New York liberal. He is one of our greatest essayists, a humanist and a quintessentially rational man who has often argued in favor of the value and importance of religious thought. Born in modest circumstance, descendent of Hungarian immigrants (as was another of our most prolific writers, Isaac Asimov) he fell in love (as he recounts in these pages) with the NYC Museum of National History as a child and never lost his love for "the odd little tidbits," nor his sense of himself as a natural historian. He is a "student of snails" (p. 324), a classical nerd "shorter than average" (p. 246) who spent more time at the Hayden Planetarium and the Tyrannosaurus exhibition than he did playing his beloved baseball, a paleontologist who became not only a gifted essayist but an international celebrity.It's a neat trick what Stephen Jay Gould has done with his life, and it is a neat trick that he "chose" (if I may) to leave this vale of tears almost immediately after finishing not just this book, but more significantly, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, the "life work" of his "mature years, twenty years in the making and 1,500 pages in the printing." It has been noted that people typically die after a long illness not the day before Christmas or the day before their birthday or the day before the christening of their youngest grandchild, but the day after. And the very great choose to leave us only after they have finished some compelling project to which they have devoted the last years of their life. Gould remarked in the Preface on the coincidence of his finishing these twin projects together in time for publication in the "palindromic" year of 2002--(how he loves the odd fact, the detail that others might miss, and how he rejoices in sharing such "tidbits")--while recalling the earlier "conjunction" of the near simultaneous publication of his first book of collected essays, Ever Since Darwin, and his "first technical book for professional colleagues," Ontogeny and Phylogeny in 1977. I wonder if he knew that these would be the bookends of his life.This collection is touted on the blurb as "the m

I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History

I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould is his best to date... and I'm sorry to say his last, as he died May 20, 2002. God Rest Your Soul, Stephen.I Have Landed is a collection of essays, (thirty-one to be exact), and the scope and breath of these essays is broad. Gould has a way with words to bring complex subjects, casting new light upon them and bringing them to the common man with understanding and enlightenment. The book is divided into eight segments or groupings all of which are compelling and forthright. We see Gould's musing narrative and storytelling ability which brings together themes that have defined his career, humanistic disciplines, his mini intellectual biographies, intellectual palentology, and topics that bring obvious delight to him.As the reader goes from one subject to the next, we see that Gould has command and is ushering us on with his famous wit. This book is truly Gould's most revealing and personal opus. A brilliant mind, with good humor making the reader feel at home.I've enjoyed reading Gould's essays through the years, as others have, and as all good things come to and end... let me say adieu my friend.

Oh God Steve Just Died

I'm crying as I write this because Steve Gould just died of cancer, and he was a friend. No, I never met him, but I've read his essays for years and he was a brilliant man who wrote to you as if you were smart, too, but you just didn't know the inside terminology. This is the last book of his collected science essays from Natural History magazine, but his subjects are much wider than science. There's a lot of biology here, and a lot of why you should care about biology, but the most important thing is that this book -- like all of Steve's books -- is like listening to a friend who's fascinating. Each chapter here was a Natural History column and the subjects range from baseball to evolution. I know this is rambling on and I'm sorry. I will miss him, my smart friend Steve. As much as you can love someone you know only from his writing, I loved him. That's the kind of writer -- and scientist -- he was. He cared passionately about knowledge.