This is called the radial sesame’s, which lies on the underside of the panda’s forepaws. The Panda’s Thumb follows on the heels of his equally readable Ever Since Darwin (1977), a collection drawn from the same journal. "An early collection of Stephen Jay Gould's essays from his column in Natural History magazine, The greatest modern voice for the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Stephen Gould must be the most charming science writer I have ever read anything of. Highly recommended! “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”, “I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. Finally finishing it I must say it is a bit less cohesive then the previous one but has some texts that shine even more on their own. In pandas, the radial sesamoid is greatly enlarged and elongated until it almost equals the metapodial bones of the true digits in length. It definitely took me a couple of chapters to get into this book. Stephen Gould has a remarkable ability to cover scientific concepts in an accessible manor without dumbing things down. He and a colleague, whose name I forget, re-purposed Kipling's term "just-so stories" to describe evolutionarily plausible but unprovable explanations for things. Save for a few slow parts dealing with truly ancient and simple life or Victorian naturalists, I found all of them engaging, entertaining, bite-sized reads. This may partially explain the odd choice of title – the panda’s “thumb” doesn’t seem as sensational a topic to me as dinosaurs’ relationship to birds or the comparative measurements of male and female (human) brains, but perhaps it was the headline-grabber in 1980, for whatever reason. The Panda's thumb is one of the most widely read and translated SJ Gould books. To see what your friends thought of this book. August 17th 1992 Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. My only concern is with the constant movement of science, that insights of the seventies may be stale in the current thinking. In The Panda's Thumb, a book of essays, Gould explained that the so-called thumb that allows the panda to strip the leaves off bamboo is really part of … View a video showing the red panda using its extra thumb to feed. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1980) is a collection of 31 essays by the Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The Panda's Thumb won the 1981 U.S. National Book Award in Science. The sexual and racial. The pandas’ ‘thumbs’ — which are actually abnormally enlarged wrist bones — allow both species to grip and handle bamboo with remarkable dexterity. Written as a series of vignettes about various topics, each was an entertaining and enlightening read, although I'm not sure if I'm a. I bought this second hand over 13 years ago and, after reading it, should not have put it off for so long. An engineer's best solution is debarred by history. Interesting read, much like “Ever Since Darwin” though these essays don’t seem to be as engaging. How I wish I could have crashed his lectures when he gave them! The Panda's Thumb is an overall interesting book dealing with the curiosities of evolution through a compendium of articles written by Gould mostly in the 70s for Nature magazine. Immediately download the The Panda's Thumb (book) summary, chapter-by-chapter analysis, book notes, essays, quotes, character descriptions, lesson plans, and more - everything you need for studying or teaching The Panda's Thumb (book). All in all, still worth the read though. Finally finishing it I must say it is a bit less cohesive then the previous one but has some texts that shine even more on their own. So he spent a lifetime not just doing his own research but in popularizing disciplined neo-Darwinian critical thinking in this series of essays in Natural History magazine or Nature magazine, I forget.