Attending marvels: A Patagonian journal (Time reading program special edition)
(Journal of scientific expedition to Patagonia in 1930. to...)
Journal of scientific expedition to Patagonia in 1930. to search for fossils to help understand mammalian evolution.Introduction by Laurence M.Gould,new to this edition.
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This lost novella by the century's most renowned paleon...)
This lost novella by the century's most renowned paleontologist has been called the greatest time-travel story in more than one hundred years.
Vanishing from Earth on February 30, 2162, while working on a problem of quantum theory, research chronologist Sam Magruder is thrown back 80 million years in time. Endowed with the intelligence of a twenty-second-century man, Magruder struggles to survive, feeding on scrambled turtle eggs and diligently recording his observations on a stone-slab diary, even as menacing tyrannosaurus try to gnaw off his limbs.
Filled with magnificent descriptions of the dinosaurs as only Simpson himself could render them, The Dechronization of Sam Magruder is not only a classic time-travel tale but a philosophical work that astutely ponders the complexities of human existence and achievement.
Why and How: Some Problems and Methods in Historical Biology
(Consists of selected excerpts from previous writing by Pr...)
Consists of selected excerpts from previous writing by Professor Simpson - without any doubt the most eminent of all evolutionary biologists. Each of the six sections begins with a general statement about the subjects to be covered. Each separate text is preceded by a comment, the purpose of which is to provide background and context for the following text and also, when appropriate, to discuss the present status of the subject. Thus although the book is centred on papers previously published, its comments are new and in sum present a current viewpoint on the subjects treated
(1963 Time/Life trade paperback. Too early for ISBN. Georg...)
1963 Time/Life trade paperback. Too early for ISBN. George Gaylord SIMPSON. One of the world leading paleontologists of the twentieth century chronicles the journey of discover and journeying through Patagonia.
The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man, Revised Edition (The Terry Lectures Series)
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A world-famous scientist answers the fundamental questi...)
A world-famous scientist answers the fundamental questions concerning the changes in the course of the history of life and considers human aims, values, and duties in the light of the nature of man and his place in the history of life.
"The clearest and soundest exposition of the meaning of evolution that has yet been written."Ashley Montagu, Isis
(from Wikipedia: George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 - O...)
from Wikipedia: George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 - October 6, 1984) was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution (1944), The meaning of evolution (1949) and The major features of evolution (1953). He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibrium (in Tempo and mode) and dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined the word hypodigm in 1940, and published extensively on the taxonomy of fossil and extant mammals. Simpson was influentially, and incorrectly, opposed to Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift. He was Professor of Zoology at Columbia University, and Curator of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1945 to 1959. He was Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University from 1959 to 1970, and a Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona until his retirement in 1982.
(An introduction to the principles of general biology prov...)
An introduction to the principles of general biology provides a study of past and present plant and animal life, its distribution and its interrelationship
George Gaylord Simpson was an American paleontologist known for his contributions to evolutionary theory and to the understanding of intercontinental migrations of animal species in past geological times.
Background
George Gaylord Simpson was born on June 16, 1902, in Chicago, Illinois.
While he was still very young, his parents, Julia Kinney and Joseph Alexander Simpson, moved to Denver, Colorado, where his father first worked as a railroad claim adjuster and later speculated in irrigation, land development, and mining. George frequently accompanied his father on travels through the mountains, and this led to a lasting fondness for outdoor life and exploration.
Education
Simpson slid easily through grade school, Latin school (ninth grade), and high school in East Denver. Though missing much school for illness, he learned well on his own and graduated in 1918. The following autumn he entered the University of Colorado, where he acquired a particular interest in historical geology, an interest that was sparked and fanned by Arthur Jerrold Tieje. Tieje left Colorado in 1922 and encouraged Simpson to transfer to Yale, which was strong in both geology and zoology. Simpson's senior year was spent at Yale. After graduation in 1923 he immediately entered graduate school and studied with Richard Swan Lull, a leading American paleontologist.
Career
In the summer of 1924 he accompanied William Diller Matthew, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, on a collecting expedition to Texas and New Mexico. Returning to Yale, Simpson continued his study of Mesozoic mammals-the oldest fossilized mammals, of which there was a rare collection in the Peabody Museum at Yale. These mammals became the subject of Simpson's dissertation and led in the year following his graduation to a study of the European Mesozoic mammals at the British Museum. From this work came his first published monograph (1928), although since 1925 he had written somewhat over 30 articles (at his death he had over 700 publications, nearly 50 of which were books).
While in England Simpson received job offers from Yale and from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He chose a position with the latter and remained there as curator of vertebrate paleontology until 1959. As curator at the museum Simpson received many opportunities to carry out fossil collecting expeditions.
Simpson's early expeditions included travels to Florida, Montana, New Mexico, Argentina (specifically Patagonia), and Venezuela. The Scarritt Expeditions (funded by Horace Scarritt, a wealthy banker) occupied much of the 1930s. Under these Simpson went twice to Patagonia (1930-1931 and 1933 - 1934). First studying the country's fossil collections in museums at Buenos Aires and La Plata, he later tracked down in Patagonia a field rich with fossil mammals from the early Cenozoic period (the Age of Mammals).
The description and interpretation of Simpson's findings in Patagonia were set forth in his classic work The Beginning of the Age of Mammals in South America (Vol. I, 1948; Vol. II, 1967). Here Simpson told of finding only three groups of mammals in the lower strata (ungulates, edentates, and marsupials). He surmised that South America had been isolated from animal immigration shortly after the origin of mammals in the late Mesozoic (Age of Reptiles) and had remained that way during most of mammalian history (the Cenozoic began approximately 60 million years ago). During this time of isolation, however, South America had received one installment of mammals from another continent. A group of primates and rodents, in a manner which Simpson was unable to explain, colonized South America and flourished toward the middle of the Age of Mammals.
Simpson's first major contribution to theoretical biology was in the area of evolution. Since Darwin, paleontologists had almost exclusively been evolutionists, but, again with little exception, they failed to accept Darwin's mechanism for evolution-natural selection. They commonly believed, as epitomized by H. F. Osborn (a colleague of Simpson at the American Museum during Simpson's early years) that long-term phenomena of evolution (macro evolution), such as speciation or major changes in a line of descent (for example, the shift from three-toed to one-toed horses), required explanations that could only be reached through studies of the fossil record.
Simpson was not a typical paleontologist, however. He had always been adept at mathematics, and Anne Roe had introduced him to the powerful statistical techniques used regularly in her field. Consequently, Simpson was able to recognize the efficacy with which a small group of genetic statisticians were solving problems in evolution. In the 1920s and 1930s R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright had independently worked out statistical principles by which an advantageous variation could be carried through a population in time and subsequently change the adapted nature of that population. That is, they demonstrated that natural selection could theoretically work.
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1942) advanced paleontology in a number of ways. It proposed many means by which evolution might work and demonstrated that hypothesis does have a role in paleontology. It answered the question of whether the fossil record could be reconciled with the new statistical approach that geneticists had applied to natural selection and laid the groundwork for a union of micro and macro evolution in a single principle. It also showed that the fossil record can be described and interpreted quantitatively. Broadly, it formed part of the greater synthesis which united all the various biological subdisciplines in a common understanding of evolution.
Shortly after being hired by the American Museum, he began compiling a catalogue to facilitate storage and retrieval of the museum's extensive collection of mammals. He collected all the contemporary studies in mammalian taxonomy and produced a systematic classification of the mammals organized down to the level of family. This was published in 1931. By 1942 Simpson had written a greatly expanded version. This book, published in 1945, was praised as the first attempt to organize and set forth explicitly the principles of an evolutionary taxonomy.
Simpson called the period 1944 to 1956 the halcyon period of his life. He continued studies in evolution, participated in the founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and wrote two books on this subject.
Research in 1954 took him to Brazil under invitation from the Brazilian National Research Council. There he lectured, consulted Brazilian scientists, and studied mastodons in museums and in the field.
A second expedition to Brazil, in 1955, ended with a severe accident, which forced Simpson to be immediately transported back to New York City and left him crippled for two years. During his recuperation he published a textbook on general biology, Life (1957), with C. S. Pittendrigh and L. H. Tiffany. The text was used extensively and employed a novel approach to biology, presenting evolution as the central principle while ignoring the traditional dichotomy between plants and animals.
As a consequence of his lingering disability, Simpson was removed from the chairmanship of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum. Subsequent developments led to his resignation as curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum and as professor at Columbia University in 1959. Shortly thereafter Simpson became the Alexander Agassiz Professor at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (aligned with Harvard University).
Simpson carried on his research from Cambridge for the following eight years.
During this time he published his favorite book, This View of Life (1964), which was a collection of previous, shorter works (Simpson preferred to lecture from a written text rather than from notes). Simpson also travelled extensively during this period.
Simpson remained employed half-time by the Museum of Comparative Zoology and continued his research under its auspices until 1970. In addition, he served as part-time professor at the University of Arizona, where he remained until full retirement in 1982.
In Patagonia in 1933 Simpson had made an extensive collection of fossil penguins. He worked on this collection only sporadically, but after his partial retirement in 1970 he found great pleasure in studying them. This study took him and Anne to museums in London and Stockholm; on field expeditions to South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand; and on three cruises to Antarctica. The result was the book Penguins: Past and Present, Here and There (1976).
Throughout his life, Simpson worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm. Complete retirement in 1982, when he left his professorship at the University of Arizona, was merely a nominal change-two books published after retirement—Fossils and the History of Life (1983) and Discoverers of the Lost World (1984)—attest to his tenacious desire to work, ending only with his death late in 1984.
George Gaylord Simpson was raised as a Christian but later became an agnostic.
Connections
In 1923 George Gaylord Simpson secretly married Lydia Pedroja and from this marriage issued four daughters (Helen, Patricia Gaylord, Joan, and Elizabeth). George loved each dearly, but the marriage ran amuck. In 1932, Simpson began to live with Anne Roe, a childhood friend, who also had obtained a Ph. D. , from Columbia University in psychology, and had divorced her husband in 1932. Simpson would gain a divorce from Lydia in April 1938, and marry Anne a month later.