Steven Rose

«The Richness of Life» is a big book (600+) pages, and requires attentive reading. The book is a comprehensive, commemorative volume presenting a representative selection of the essays of Stephen Jay Gould. Despite the fact that his essays in the area of Natural History are very scientific Gould has always enjoyed a wide readership and his premature death was lamented. The main focus of nearly all essays is Darwin's theory of evolution, either through the fossil record or diversity of animal forms. A number of essays are very theoretical. I did not enjoy reading this volume as much as I had anticipated. It appears to be rather heavy-handed. The original volumes of essays published in Gould's lifetime seem to be lighter and more readable.… (more)

I needed these authors at that stage of my intellectual life when I was caught in the toils of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology – dismal years of spiritual depression or oppression. But I didn’t have Goodreads then, to locate alternate ideas, and I’m not of scientific background, to find my way around. So I bought this secondhand a decade or two too late.

I find it unreadable now. It’s far too politicised, from the calm waters I am since in. Biology is, of course, ideology (their slogan and title of another book). One way to see that – which made an impression on me – is to follow how evolutionary science went quite differently in a different culture: case study: Darwin Without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian Evolutionary Thought. But it’s work on animals that gave me my alternative: Frans de Waal and others. In retrospect, for my spiritual salvation (I don't mean religious, which I've never been), I only needed to go back to Dostoyevsky, who was in a fight against an old determinism, whereas I had met a new.… (more)

Rose offers a useful overview of the work in neuroscience, beginning the the formation of the brain in other organisms, and building up to the human brain. Through his explanation of the human brain, he offers an important critique of the genetic reductionism that is increasingly popular in the field, demanding an historical materialist explanation of the mind. He also looks at the limitations in attempts to use biochemical treatments of aberrant behavior, etc. Rose is also a fairly entertaining writer, and his takedown of Pinker, etc. is pretty funny on occasion.… (more)