What Evolution Is
by Ernst Mayr
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ernst MayrEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-10
ISBN: 0465044263
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Book Reviews of What Evolution Is
Book Review: Best Summary of Darwinianism
Summary: 5 Stars
Warning: This book uses technical language for technical thought. Indeed, it one of its singular strengths, but this excellent overview may not be for beginners.
We are in the midst of the second-most important paradigm shift in history (heliocentrism being the first), and most of us only have an inkling of it. It began in 1959 with Darwin's "Origin of the Species" followed by "Descent of Man." Because (1) its theories - plural - undermined some of our most precious traditions, (2) time was required to harness incontrovertible proof, and (3) biblical fundamentalism has assaulted it from every angle, the paradigm shift itself has been a gradual process (itself an evolutionary fact). But now that genetics, embryology, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, etc. have repeatedly demonstrated the fact of evolution, opposition and resistance is worse than useless and futile, it's counter-productive.
But, what is evolution (aka, Darwinism, Modern Synthesis)? Most us know it is about gradual development of the immense diversity of "life," speciation, survival of the fittest, natural selection, adaptedness, struggle for existence, and similar themes. All of which is true, but all of which is far from all that is true. Evolution requires rethinking and new language, not just adding new ideas to our knowledge base, but in many cases replacing archaic language and ideas. "Essences" must be replaced by "populations," the Great Chain of Being is incoherent as well as untrue, ditto the scala naturae, teleology and orthogenesis, "higher" versus "lower" animals, "complexity" as superior to "simplicity," differences in kind (mostly in degree), etc. plus an entirely different language to describe the biosphere, e.g., genotype, phenotype, demes, niches, allopatric, sympatric, genetic "flow" versus "drift," etc. Both language and the thoughts it represents have shifted.
Many writers of popular science, most notably Matt Ridley, have done a great job in making evolution and its implications accessible to a wide audience. Because of these achievements, Mayr's book becomes all the more necessary and indispensable: We need a scientist's textbook for laity that provides acquaintance with the language science itself uses (with a necessary glossary provided) to explain biological phenomena and their relation to evolution in one of the most significant paradigm shifts in human history. Moreover, evolution's implications need to be stressed without ambiguity and without an ulterior agenda. Finally, because so many sub-disciplines of biology were needed in the 80 years after Darwin to cohere the architecture from biology, embryology, genetics, molecular biology, paleontology, etc. few books encompass them all. Mayr's does, pointing out past errors and identifying unresolved issues and tenative hypotheses (these are on the margins, not of the fact itself).
This basic knowledge is not only necessary to understand evolution, but is needed to evaluate sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, Darwinian psychiatry, Darwinian literary theory, the revised concept of a "human nature," why the practice of medicine is shifting to a Darwinian orientation, why so much Western intellectual speculation, tradition, and metaphysics is now detritus, etc. It's senseless and wasteful to argue with anti-evolutionists, just as it is senseless and useless to argue with the Flat-Earth Society. The anti-evolutionists' cavils merely distract in order to divert the dialogue, while Darwinian evolution goes beyond the obvious fact of evolution; and with its insights uproots, refocuses, and reorients us in many other significant ways, so that the seemingly-intractable problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental hazards, utopian schemes, useless and wasteful "health" schemes, etc. can be approached honesty and candidly from fact, not from myth or Armageddon.
The strengths are its unrelenting scientific language, cohering the sub-disciplines and outside disciplines into one interdisciplinary, but primarily biological, explanation of evolution with exacting specificity. (The Glossary is both necessary and helpful.) It delineates the known from the consensus to the tentative. It suggests only a few of the wider implications, and creative and imaginative readers will add others. But just as important, the facts of evolution do not merely "add" to our knowledge, they change some our cherished conceptual inheritances, and require we rethink in a different mode. The spectacular ability to do all this in a single volume makes it indispensible as the paradigm shift continues.
Highly recommended.
Summary of What Evolution Is
At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man.Science Masters Series
Gathering insights from his seven-decade career, the renowned biologist Ernst Mayr argues that evolution is now to be considered not a theory but a fact--and that "there is not a single Why? question in biology that can be answered adequately without a consideration of evolution."
Mayr, emeritus professor of zoology at Harvard University, has long been one of the world's foremost researchers in genetic and evolutionary theory. In this overview of past and current scientific thought, he discusses key concepts and terms, among them the origin of species, the (somewhat metaphorical) "struggle for existence," and agents of micro- and macroevolution. Somewhat against the grain, he argues against reduction and for the study of evolution at the phenotypic, not genetic, level. In his concluding pages, Mayr offers a careful overview of human evolution, adding his view that humankind is indeed unique--though "it has not yet completed the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal life in all of its structures."
Advanced students of the life sciences, as well as readers looking for a survey of current evolutionary theory, will find Mayr's book a useful companion. --Gregory McNamee
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