What Evolution Is Book

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Mayr really gets to the heart of the question... why evolution, what evidence, and the role of organic diversity. Mayr has spent seventy years in search of the answers and reading this book reveals answers to some of the most challenging problems posed by evolutionary theory, or as Mayr likes to put it, evolutionary fact.

Yes, those who need more evidence to prove evolution; why are you hedging. The clains of the creationists have been refuted so frequently and so thoroughly that there is no need to cover this subject once more. Publications by Alters, Eldredge, Futuyma, Kitcher, Montagu, Newell, Peacocke, Ruse, and Young all are in concert with Mayr... evolution is fact.

Mayr believes that the story of evolution as it is worked out during the past fifty years continues to be attacked and criticized. The critics either hold an entirely different ideology, as do the creationists, or they simply misunderstand the Darwinian paradigm. The dogma of religion should be left out of the discussions of evolution as irrelevant, as religion is not a biological process.

Mayr discusses the reductionist approach, an approach that reduces everything down to the level of the gene. As Mayr describes this in a refreshingly nontechnical language, you can appreciate evolutionary phenomena much better.

An interesting section toward the back of the book in the fianl section where Mayr has a rather provocative approach of evolution as it is related to viewpoints and values of modern man. I found this to be very enlightening and fascinatingly compelling bringing insight and clarity to human evolution, and how did mankind evolve.

If you like to read about evolution, evolutionary biology, and want a clear straight forward appoach, this is the book for you as Mayr pulls no punches as the question is asked... Are humans alone? Are we the only intelligent beings in this vast universe? Mayr says, "Alas, the rutted road from bacteria to humans is long and difficult. Following the origin of life on Earth there were nothing but prokaryotes for the next billion years, and highly intelligent life originated only about 300,000 years ago, in a single one of the more than one billion species that had arisen on Earth. These are indeed long odds."

"Yes, for all practical purposes, man is alone." We can only consider this that evolution is something unexpected, but it happened anyway dispelling the odds.

This book is an introduction although without any of the superior attitude so common amongst other popular science writers who already know everything and don't want to argue about something that is obvious. Mayr, generally, does not do this and points out weaknesses in the current evolutionary view. I mean: 1. areas where much work still needs to be done although not actually challenging the evolutionary paradigm and 2. those deserving of deeper study which may involve some changes in the current view.

In addition, Mayr goes through pretty well everything in the modern synthesis in an easy going style which is light and pleasant to read. Not too academic or too simplistic but just right for the interested layman. What Mayr notes at the beginning is relevant, he wants to write the book for those interested people, interested biologists and other scientists and those people who do not agree with evolution eg creationists. The well laid headings and boxes indicating important aspects are also an excellent idea.

All in all a very good book on evolution. Now for the not so good bits. Although Mayr states that everything will be explained for a layman this is not always followed and at times I knew what he was talking about because I had prior knowledge of the terms. Many examples exist eg page 12 he mentions heliocentricity, I don't know many non-scientists who know this term, page 13 he mentions biota without explanation etc etc. This also applies to some diagrams even though they are meticulously referenced much is not explained but rather just taken and inserted. These problems are all through the book and don't let up, even with the glossary at the back which certainly does not cover everything.

In addition Mayr at times has an arrogant stance in regard to evolution, stating it as a fact rather than a theory. This cannot be supported, it remains a theory just like those of other sciences even the physical sciences which are certainly more exacting and contain a great deal of experimental evidence.

So, in general a very good book which can be improved.

I cannot think of anyone else who is able to present all levels of the complexity and subtely of the process of evolution and the theory of natural selection with such precision and clarity than Ernst Mayr, a venerable scientist, "the world's greatest living evolutionary biologist" (Steven Jay Gould), "the Darwin of the 20th century" (New York Times).

This book is not only consisted of rigorous arguments, but also full of compelling illrustrative examples picked up from the diversity of living beings on our earth of various geological ages (from the fossil record to modern human beings) and places in support of those arguments.
Mayr's knowledge in biology is so comprehensive and his narrative so straighforward and lucid that he recounts those examples of evolution history just like a grandfather telling some everyday stories to his grandsons.

And I especially recommend those who once found or still find the so-called "GENE EYES' VIEW" (as popularized by Richard Dawkins) attractive shall seriously study this great work. And then he or she, I think, will soon discover that how imprecise and misguiding is the metaphorical language of those sociobiologists in their description of almost every parts of the process of evolution. This book shall at least provoke our cautions towards the trend of reductionism and atomism in various branch of scientific endeavor.

Besides, Jared Diamond's preface is also well written. It let us have a look into the extraordinary life of this great scientist. I am especially moved to read that Mayr "at the age of 97, still writing a new book every year or two."

Finally, I have also to point out what seems to me to be hardly a harmless drawback of this otherwise excellent work. This is the author's explicit belief, as expressed in the section on HUMAN ETHICS, in the "moral education" of the "world's great religion", especially for the "cultures of the Christian world". I feel quite puzzled how Mayr could think that some "perfectly sound" ethical principles could ever be deduced from a utterly absurd world-view, as that which is presented by the creationists, which, in so far as I understand it, seems to Mayr to have already been completed refuted by the Darwinian evolutionists.