SOURCE: Gonzales, Moishe. “Postmodern Biology?” Telos 25, no. 92 (summer 1992): 181-86.

In the following review, Gonzales argues that Wonderful Life acts as an example of how postmodernism may have infiltrated the biology and paleontology disciplines.

Nothing seems to annoy scientists more than the suggestion that their work is dependent on or influenced by something outside of science. The paradigmatic image of a dogmatic Cardinal Bellarmino coercing Galileo into recanting his discovery of Jupiter's moons has terminally discredited any attempt to judge scientific claims within any allegedly higher extra-scientific tribunal, be it theological, metaphysical or political. Yet scientific research remains an entirely human undertaking and, as such, subject to the vicissitudes of history and other extra-scientific constraints. As R. G. Collingwood concluded, “Natural science as a form of thought exists and always has existed in a context of history, and depends on historical thought for its existence … no one can understand...