First in Line

May 15, 2005
One of the most important fossils of paleoanthropology is a skull discovered in South Africa in 1924 by anatomist Raymond Dart. But the skull's assignment to revolutionary status was several decades in the making, an intellectual process here analyzed by Gundling. The overturning of one scientific theory by another could be considered an arcane topic; however, the popularity of the landmark book " The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" , by Thomas Kuhn (1970), would seem to undermine that premise, and Gundling makes a case study of Kuhn's ideas. Gundling explains a process by which Dart's fossil, after initially being disparaged by establishment figures as an ape ancestor, came to be accepted by 1950 as a human ancestor" ." Gundling connects the papers and symposia by which Dart was vindicated for the growing number of readers au courant on the science of human origins. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)