Resena: Michael Ruse, Joseph Travis, Edward O. Wilson
*Starred Review* If ever there were an education in a book, there’s one in this massive volume. It’s a two-part affair, the first consisting of 16 topical overviews and the second constituting a dictionary-encyclopedia of key concepts, persons, and landmark publications in the history of evolutionary science. Each piece in both parts is by an authority or authorities in its particular field, each includes its own bibliography, and there are illustrations throughout, invariably reproduced legibly large. The editors kick things off with “The History of Evolutionary Thought,” in which they delineate three stages. Before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, evolution was a pseudoscience that “rode the back of the doctrine of progress.” Though a progressive, Darwin broke the connection of evolution to progress with the concept of “blind” natural selection. But the science of his time could not support natural selection, so it remained a speculative “popular science,” adopted by some as a substitute for religion. Eventually, technological improvements and such twentieth-century developments as genetics and radioactivity led to the acceptance of evolution as a field of fully professional scientific endeavor. Surveys of scientific evolutionary topics, such as origin of life, adaptation, speciation, evolutionary medicine, molecular evolution, and sociobiology, succeed the historical essay, and four reviews of evolution’s impact on philosophy, religion, society, and American culture wrap up the first part of what is most probably the commemorative par excellence of the Origin of Species sesquicentennial.

Idioma: INGLES
Categoría: Ciencia, Divulgación

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