Eight Little Piggies

Eight Little Piggies

Author	Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher	W. W. Norton & Co.
Publication date	1993
Media type	Print
Pages	479
ISBN	0-393-03416-X
OCLC	25916011
Dewey Decimal	575/.001 20
LC Class	QH45.5 .G7 1993
Preceded by	Bully for Brontosaurus
Followed by	Dinosaur in a Haystack

Eight Little Piggies (1993) is the sixth volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were selected from his monthly column "The View of Life" in Natural History magazine, to which Gould contributed for 27 years. The book covers topics that are common to Gould's writing in a discursive manner, including evolution and its teaching, science biography, probabilities, and common sense.^{[ citation needed ]}

The title essay, "Eight Little Piggies", is a thought piece on the prevalence of five digits on hands and feet throughout the animal kingdom. ^[1] It also explores concepts such as archetypes and polydactyly via the anatomy of early tetrapods.

Other essays discuss themes such as the scale of extinction, vertebrate anatomy, grand patterns of evolution, and human nature.^{[ citation needed ]}

References

1. Farrell, John (June 21, 1993). "Eight Little Piggies". National Review . Vol. 45, no. 12. p. 81. Retrieved 2024-12-22– via EBSCOhost.

External links

• The Snail Wars - by Derek Bickerton, The New York Times
• Book review - by Howard A. Doughty, College Quarterly
• Book review - John Farrell, National Review
• Book review ^{[ permanent dead link ]} - Edward Kay, Eye Weekly
• W. W. Norton promotional page
• Google Books - contains book excerpts and jacket description