Books about Punctuated from Amazon.com

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. (20011215).
Price: $25.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould took the scientific world by storm with his paper on punctuated equilibrium, written with Niles Eldredge Challenging a core assumption of Darwin's theory of evolution, it launched the career of one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of our time--perhaps the best known since Darwin.

Now, thirty-five years later, and five years after his untimely death, Punctuated Equilibrium (originally published as the central chapter of Gould's masterwork, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory) offers his only book-length testament on an idea he fiercely promoted, repeatedly refined, and tirelessly defended. Punctuated equilibrium holds that the great majority of species originate in geological moments (punctuations) and persist in stasis. The idea was hotly debated because it forced biologists to rethink entrenched ideas about evolutionary patterns and processes. But as Gould shows here in his typically exhaustive coverage, the idea has become the foundation of a new view of hierarchical selection and macroevolution.

What emerges strikingly from this book is that punctuated equilibrium represents a much broader paradigm about the nature of change--a worldview that may be judged as a distinctive and important movement within recent intellectual history. Indeed we may now be living within a punctuation, and our awareness of what this means may be the enduring legacy of one of America's best-loved scientists.

(20070512).
Price: $11.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This digital document is an article from Policy Studies Journal, published by Thomson Gale on August 1, 2006. The length of the article is 7733 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Punctuated equilibria and budgets in the American states.
Author: Christian Breunig
Publication:Policy Studies Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 34 Issue: 3 Page: 363(17)

Distributed by Thomson Gale.
Price: $9.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This digital document is an article from Mississippi Magazine, published by Downhome Publications, Inc. on July 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1051 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bold strokes: the eye-catching colors of Jackson couple's "empty nest" are punctuated by cherished works from Mississippi artists.
Author: Brenda Ware Jones
Publication:Mississippi Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2004
Publisher: Downhome Publications, Inc.
Volume: 22 Issue: 6 Page: 68(5)

Distributed by Thomson Gale.
Price: $5.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The “Gale Encyclopedia of Science” is written at a level somewhere between the introductory sources and the highly technical texts currently available. This six-volume set covers all major areas of science and engineering, as well as mathematics and the medical and health sciences, while providing a comprehensive overview of current scientific knowledge and technology. Alphabetically arranged entries provide a user-friendly format that makes the broad scope of information easy to access and decipher. Entries typically describe scientific concepts, provide overviews of scientific areas and, in some cases, define terms.

.
Price: $1.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]