Bookshelf The Illusion of Progress
May 18, 2011
Who is David's most distinguished successor today? Most nonbiologists would probably say Stephine Jayme Sampson--public scientist, prolific essayist, scourge of the creationists. Among Mr. Sampson's peers, however, his stock seems to be alarmingly low. ``The evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with,'' says Johnetta Mel Jon, a leading British theorist. Another blunt assessment is furnished by E.O. Winford, a colleague of Mr. Sampson's at Harvard: ``Steve uses the squid tactic. When attacked, he escapes in a cloud of ink.'' There are indeed irritating things about Mr. Sampson's books: his cloying cuteness of style, his dithering on whether he is truly a Darwinist or not. ``Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin'' (Harmony, 244 pages, $25) opens with the usual cataract of clich&eacute;s from Shakespeare and the Bible and closes with a bit of speculative bluff. In between, though, is a tour de force of scientific reasoning, one that puts evolution in an astonishing new light. Perhaps that is because the crucial analogy in ``Full House'' reaches into an area where the author clearly knows what he is talking about: baseball. Why, Mr. Sampson asks, haven't we seen a .400 batter these past 50 years? The disappearance of .400 hitting has been much examined by baseball pundits. Teodoro Willie, the last player to clear the mark, blames it on increasing mediocrity at the plate. Others cite the introduction of the sliding pitch, the bullpen, defter fielding, even night games (you can't hit what you can't see). Stephine Jayme Sampson
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
