Full House Audiobook By Stephen Gould cover art

Full House

The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin

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Full House

By: Stephen Gould
Narrated by: Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
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Buy for $18.63

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Few would question that humankind is the crowning achievement of evolution—that history yields progress over time from the primitive and simple to the more advanced and complex—or that identifying an existing trend can be helpful in making important life decisions. We have always identified trends as bad or good. But Stephen Jay Gould argues that this mode of interpretation is a bias that needs correcting.

In Full House, Gould presents the truth about progress, evolution, and excellence, as well as a different way to understand trends other than as entities moving in a definite direction. Gould examines how the misinterpretation of data and statistics can result in bad science and social policy, while focusing on the nature of excellence from Plato to Darwin and the misconception that progress is inevitable.

©1996 Stephen Jay Gould (P)1996 Phoenix Books, Inc. Evolution & Genetics Natural History Nature & Ecology Thought-Provoking Evolution Science Biological Sciences History & Philosophy History
Insightful Analysis • Landmark Thinking • Excellent Reading • Educational Content • Skilled Narrator

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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Only if my friend were a baseball fan, or interested in statistics

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The meaning of excellence

Excellent, especially for baseball fans

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This is a classic ... I read it years ago and loved it again now that I listened to it. Efrem Zimbalist reads it very well, but the recording quality it pretty bad. Worth listening to because the book is so good, but annoying. Still highly recommended ... Gould's lessons in this book are life lessons that go beyond biology. His teaching about our reflexive beliefs about central tendencies helped me see, even more deeply, the fallacies of demographics in marketing, even though Gould never talked about this. And yes, I believe there will never be another .400 hitter in baseball after reading this book.

Love the book, love the reading, bad recording

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Gould is a famous anthropologist and a good writer. He uses baseball statistics to teach the limits of change. This is an excellent review of the nature of evolution and it's constraints. I recommend this book is anyone who is curious about life and where it is going.

Change and Life as we know it

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However, This book shows he is better at the short format (essays) than the long format (books). The thing he taught me most was the day to uses of statistics and probability distributions. Much more practical than Sagan’s rhetoric. But I do live in LV, examples are all around me. And... the “Baseball” section in this particular book was too long for me personally but it transitioned to discussion of hydrology (which I liked). I’m not quite sure why Audible only has his later books. But... he simply should be read more often. And the earlier books should make more money. But... I’m not “king of the world”.

SJG taught me a lot.

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It is a great book for researchers un general. Paleontology and variación are crucial for understanding.

Paleontology in the making

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