Evolution for Naturalists: The Simple Principles and Complex Reality

by Philip J. Darlington

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 047104783X
• ISBN13: 9780471047834
• Release Date: December 1980
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

if you can find it, buy it

This, Phil Darlington's last book, is an eloquent "summing up" of many of the principles of Natural Selection and evolution as presented by one of the titans of the Great Age of Biogeography. Darlington was born into an age of fixed, stable continents & lived to see his entire world view overthrown by Continental Drift, yet he seems to see this upheaval as an enormous relief -one that took care of many troubling inconsistencies that had bothered him as a biologist. In E. For N. he turns his writing skills to showing how Darwin & Wallace's theory can help make sense of an enormous range of issues in ecology and natural history. The final chapter, which revolves around the then-very-new Sociobiology controversy is a remarkably gentle but authoritative call for both sides to stop bickering and get on with doing science. It is a shame that this book is out of print & it is well worth your time if you are interested in evolutionary biology from the perspective of someone who revelled in "facts on the ground" and lucky enough to stumble upon it.