SOURCE: Bywater, Michael. “Planet of the Bugs.” Spectator 277, no. 8785 (30 November 1996): 48-50.

In the following review, Bywater examines Gould's arguments about evolution in Life's Grandeur.

We live in interesting times and I sometimes wonder if we realise just how interesting they are. Perhaps we only see the symptoms. Cultures blur and decline, the hamburger-and-rock ethic governs the world, economies burst, shudder and cling on by their fingertips, porn floods the Internet, statecraft implodes towards the centre, ideologies shatter, politicians twitter helplessly about religion and ethics, the Church of England buys into the logo shibboleth. We conflate the symptoms and claim a diagnosis: lack of respect, lack of morality, lack of purpose, lack of sense.

But these are only symptoms. The disease goes far deeper, and there is no cure. All the technologies of the century are as nothing compared to the tremendous dethronement of mankind which began with the...