SOURCE: Shermer, Michael. “Evolution Up against a Wall.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (20 October 1996): 10.

In the following review, Shermer addresses Gould's discussion of the ways various systems change over time in Full House.

For the past 15 summers, I have either competed in or directed “Race Across America,” a 3,000-mile, nonstop, transcontinental bicycle race. In the race's first decade, the transcontinental record plummeted from 12 days and 3 hours to 7 days and 23 hours, but for the past five years it hasn't budged even though half of the cyclists routinely break earlier records. Why?

Some of the race's pioneers, not surprisingly, believe that they were simply better than today's competitors; current riders blame weather conditions and other variables. Now I know that both sides are wrong, thanks to the work of Harvard paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and trendsetter Stephen Jay Gould, whose new book, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to...