SOURCE: Sulloway, Frank. “The Metaphor and the Rock.” New York Review of Books 34, no. 9 (28 May 1987): 37-40.

In the following review, Sulloway draws connections between Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle's central metaphors and the text of Gould's earlier works, particularly Ontogeny and Phylogeny and The Mismeasure of Man.

Ever since the appearance of Ontogeny and Phylogeny a decade ago, Stephen Jay Gould has continued to delight and inform a wide spectrum of readers and, in doing so, to defy C. P. Snow's lament about the “two cultures” of the sciences and the humanities. Gould's monthly column in Natural History magazine, published under the heading “This View of Life,” has led to a series of highly praised volumes of essays—Ever since Darwin (1977), The Panda's Thumb (1980), Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983), and most recently The Flamingo's Smile (1985). In addition, Gould's Mismeasure of Man (1981), which won the National Book Critics' Circle...