Full House: The Spread of Excellence
from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay
Gould
Great Supplement For High School Science Classes
The human mind has a trusty device for simplifying a complex world:
reduce to averages and identify trends. Although valuable, the risk is that
we ignore variations and end up with a skewed view of reality. In
evolutionary terms, the result is a view in which humans are the inevitable
pinnacle of evolutionary progress, instead of, as Stephen Jay Gould
patiently argues, a cosmic accident that would never arise again if the tree
of life could be replanted. The implications of Goulds argument may
threaten certain of our philosophical and religious foundations but will in
the end provide us with a clearer view of, and a greater appreciation for,
the complexities of our world.
Personal Review: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from
Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould
This book is about how to analyze data. It is the clearest and best written
book on the subject I have read so far. Other well known books on the

subject include Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in
Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly
Improbable by Taleb and The Misbehavior of Markets A New Kind of
Science by Mandelbrot. Although all these authors are brilliant and their
respective books have their merits, Stephen Jay Gould's book is much
clearer. While Taleb and Mandelbrot obsess about the flaws of the normal
distribution assumption underlying investment theory, they both struggle in
offering pragmatic alternatives. Gould instead studies the shape of the
entire distribution that he calls the "Full House" and remains comfortable
within a traditional statistical framework without building any castle of cards
(referring to Mandelbrot fractal geometry).
Gould takes you on a really entertaining quantitative learning expedition by
following three separate themes: 1) the disappearance of the 0.400
baseball hitter, 2) his run in with a deadly disease, and 3) the theory of
evolution. These themes allow him to flesh out his analytical skills and
share with you concepts that are often counterintuitive and occasionally
revolutionary.
In his struggle with a deadly disease he illustrates how the median
outcome (only 8 months to live) did not worry him much. What mattered to
him after studying the related data was the skewness of the distribution
with a long right-hand tail (meaning many survivors with normal remaining
life span unaffected by the disease). He then studied what were the
characteristics of these long term survivors (age, overall health, etc...). He
noted he did share these characteristics and sure enough he survived this
disease just fine. In his case, the median outcome was irrelevant. It was
not his most likely outcome. Within this chapter he also introduces the
concept of walls or limits. Many distributions have a left wall as figures
can't be negative for many variables including stock prices, income level,
and survivors' lifespan. For Gould, `walls' are key because they dictate
that the distribution can expand in only the opposite direction.
When he moves on to the disappearance of the 0.400 hitter, Gould shows
that the distribution of hitters butts against a right wall (upper limit of
human achievement). He observed that the average hitting percentage
has not changed much over time. But, the best hitters percentages has
declined. Yet, he makes a case that today's hitters are better than the
0.400 hitters of yesteryears. What happened is that all positions improved
commensurately (fielders, pitchers). So, the 0.400 stat is not an absolute
but a relative measure of when batters outsmarted the other positions. He
comes up with this perplexing theorem: "as play improves and bell curves
march towards the right wall, variation must shrink at the right tail. The
worst players got much better, and so did everybody else. But, the best
players margin of relative superiority has consequently shrunk. He
measured this phenomena by observing the steady decline of the standard
deviation of batting average over the past century. And, indeed it declined
steadily. So, in this closed system an improvement in performance was

not marked by a rising average, but by a decline in standard deviation.
The graphs on page 119 illustrate this complex concept very clearly.
Next, Gould moves on where he left a legacy as a leading evolutionary
biologist: the theory evolution. Contrary to what we think the theory of
evolution was misnamed. Darwin wanted to use the terms "descent with
modification" instead of "evolution." Gould states Darwin referred to
"evolution" because he succumbed to the cultural pressure of his era. The
latter was obsessed with progress and the superiority of mankind. Gould
strongly suggests that Darwin's original phrasing was more accurate.
Gould goes on explaining that the animal kingdom history is captured by a
right-hand skewed distribution that buts against a left wall of minimal
complexity: the bacteria. An animal organism can not be less complex
than that. With random mutation managed by natural selection, some
species can only become more complex (not less so). Yet, this is not
evolution. Bacteria still dominate the animal kingdom. They are more
adaptable, more prevalent, more indestructible than any other animal
organism. They are the only ones who would survive a nuclear holocaust
and who can live in outer space. The process of complexity is somewhat
random. Stephen Wolfram had reached the same conclusion in his very
strange book, A New Kind of Science where he suggested that evolution
was not so evolutionary but random (and replicable through cellular
automata processes). Thanks to Gould, I now realize that Darwin and
Wolfram pretty much agreed.
In the last chapter, Gould addresses if human culture is butting now
against a right-hand wall of human potential. He thinks that is not so much
the case in the sciences where he feels we have much more to figure out.
But, he feels it is the case in the arts. Will we ever get another
Beethoven? Another Shakespeare? Or another Michelangelo? Most
probably not. Charles Murray studying the same subject in his excellent
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and
Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 reached pretty much the same conclusion.
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