Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this full house of variation, and not as the progress or degeneration of an average value, or single thing.
Stephen Jay Gould was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University and Vincent Astor Visiting Professor of Biology at New York University. A MacArthur Prize Fellow, he received innumerable honors and awards and wrote many books, including Ontogeny and Phylogeny and Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (both from Harvard).
"Bacteria and baseball. Few authors besides Stephen Jay Gould could write convincingly about both [...] Wandering about [Full House's] well-decorated rooms, nooks, and attics is a pleasure left to the reader."
- John Allen Paulos, Washington Post Book World