SOURCE: Young, J. Z. “The Ape Who Never Grows Up.” New York Review of Books 25, no. 9 (1 June 1978): 12-13.

In the following review of Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Young offers a summary and analysis of Gould's major arguments.

It is curious that through the centuries men seem to have been more interested in studying the heavens than things on Earth. Even when they did begin to investigate terrestrial matters it was the inorganic that they studied first. Exact knowledge about living creatures has come last of all among the sciences. So it has come about that Newton and his successors among physicists and chemists have usually been considered to be the only real scientists. Nor can we say that things have changed much recently. The use of high energies to break up atoms and to blow men to the moon is still acclaimed as the most fundamental form of inquiry...