Evolution: A Very Short Introduction

by Deborah Charlesworth and Brian Charlesworth

Book Overview

Less than 450 years ago, all European scholars believed that the Earth was at the center of a Universe that was at most a few million miles in extent, and that the planets, sun, and stars all rotated... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192802518
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 0.3" x 4.0"

Customer Reviews

An excellent introduction to evolution or review for the reader familiar with the topic

An excellent review for the reader familiar with Evolution. Also a very good introduction for the novice.

An excellent summary of current knowledge

It is a sign of the times that the authors on occasion take a defensive attitude to their subject. Creationism, for whatever reason, has proved remarkably adaptive and, strange as it may seem, evolutionary biologists still feel obliged to painstakingly lay out the evidence for evolution per se, rather than just discuss its mechanisms or trace its history. The Charlesworths do a good job of this, albeit in a rather dry, academic style that may not suit readers that just want a light, readable introduction to the basic principles of evolution. The book contains a fairly heavy dose of microbiology, as the authors go to some lengths to detail the biological functions underlying heredity and evolution. This is useful revision for readers with high school science, but tough going for the complete beginner. Similarly, the style is plain and succinct but never light or breezy. This is not a dummy's guide. Evolution theory took a spectacular wrong turn in the latter part of the 20th century with the emergence of the idea that selection acts only at the gene level, a view popularized by Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. This bizarre notion gained a considerable following and was the subject of a heated dispute between Dawkins and Gould that ended only with the latter's death. Thankfully, sanity has been restored and it is now once again recognized that selection can take place at any level, and it is refreshing to see the Charlesworths, in this book, stating unequivocally (p 74) that there can be selection at species level and at other levels (p 73). Interestingly, there is an extract from a very favorable review by Dawkins of this book, on the back cover. Did he skip pages 73 and 74 or has he at last seen the light? This series is prone to typos and the mutant printing gene has not been bred out of this particular book. Figure 19 is a monumental example. It is printed in landscape rather than portrait mode, effectively sideways (you'd have to see it to understand) thus leaving half the page blank and half the figure missing. The birds and mammals are therefore cruelly pruned from the tree of life. OUP really should get a grip. Look elsewhere if you want a true introductory text, but select this if you want an excellent summary of the current state of knowledge of evolution and its underlying biological processes.