Science: Bones, Baseball and Evolution

Stephen Jay Gould turns a musty discipline into a joy

Why should the layman be interested in so esoteric a subject as evolutionary biology? It is a question that Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has heard before. But as he sits in his cluttered office, amid the assorted books, charts and fossil remains that are the very sinew of his profession, he smiles tolerantly. "Why?" he asks. "Because it tells us where we came from, how we got here, and perhaps where we are going. Quite simply, it is science's version of Roots, except it is the story of all of us."

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