a brilliant rewrite of a classic
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This is a clear and concise rewrite of Origin of Species. It is easy to understand with many up-to-date examples, and adds to Darwin's original ideas with hindsight of modern scientific discovery. It is up to Steve Jones usual high standard and is fascinating to read. A great place to start if you're interested in our behaviour and evolution, and a fascinating read even if you're not!
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Pompous and unoriginal
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This book has had rave reviews all round, and it's quite hard, on actually reading it, to see why. There is virtually nothing in this book that hasn't been better presented elsewhere, and the blown-up, pompous writing style makes it painful reading (or some might find, gives it an authoritative tone). There are huge gaps in much of the reasoning in the book, where it seems Prof Jones just couldn't be bothered to explain in sufficient detail make the case studies interesting and relevant. As an argument for evolution this book stands up poorly, and its success is difficult to understand against a background of high quality evolutionary biology popular science writing.
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An exemplary effort
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Steve Jones’ innovative approach vividly demonstrates how science has sustained the concept of evolution through natural selection. He deserves our praise for the effort he’s put into assembling a wealth of resources, while presenting the information with clarity and wit. After all, the presentation of 150 years of new information is no easy task. And that information must be given the widest possible exposure. The reluctance of Christianity [the term ‘creationist’ is meaningless distinction] to understand natural selection is depressing, but even Steve Jones is unlikely to heal that blight. Charles Darwin’s THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES is the most important book ever written. Not the best known, of course, or most often read. Yet no other publication has changed so many aspects of human outlook. Daniel Dennett rightly calls Darwin’s idea ‘the universal acid’. The concept of change over time ranges over all science from quantum physics to cosmology. Steve Jones’ modernization of ORIGIN is necessarily limited to the biological realm, but as he aptly demonstrates, that’s complicated enough. Biology is a busy science these days, but Jones has brought us as up to date as writing and publication schedules permit. Addressing such a diversity of topics as AIDS, where whales came from [they’re not hairy fish!] and geological time scales, he’s provided us with a detailed scenario of evolution’s course. There are some interesting omissions in this book. No listing of Mendel’s paper in the bibliography [although the synopsis of his work in the main text is valuable]; in fact, he doesn’t mention that Darwin had a copy of it in his library – unread. Nor is there anything on island biogeography. While it would be unfitting to give Albert Russell Wallace more space in the text, there are several excellent books on a subject ORIGIN was only touched lightly. More significant is the lack of reference to the Grant’s work on Galapagos Finches [see Jonathan Weiner’s THE BEAK OF THE FINCH]. If anyone needs confirmation that evolution works, this three-decade long study will provide it. None of the lacks are significant shortcomings in this effort to ‘update’ ORIGIN. Jones has presented a stunning wealth of information, but put it together in a highly readable format. He deserves the widest possible readership for this book. With luck, Jones will perform the same service with THE DESCENT OF MAN. There’s little doubt it will be as valuable as this book.
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Modern vindication of Darwln.
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Using the original format of 'The Origin of Species', Steve Jones elaborates on Darwin's point with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and all the ammunition that modern science can provide.
Prof.Jones claims his writing could never match the concise brilliance of Darwin's original, but he is plainly wrong, as is clear from the first chapter; the pace is never turgid, it flows with a conversational ease and the explanations are quite simply brilliant - it takes real skill to convey an exotic technical point into layman's terms without resorting to jargon.Professor Jones argues that there can be no more polymaths, as too much information exists now - but he defeats the argument by his encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and how it affects all spheres of life. The interesting and obscure snippets that he relates, and the little-known consequences of actions speak volumes for evolution, and man's hand in accelerating or stifling it. He refers often to genetics (after all, that is his field of study), but that very science has done more than anything else to turn the theory of evolution into as near a law as is possible. Armed with this evidence he shows little sympathy for those who cling doggedly to a creationist or Ussherist biblical view of life. One of the best examples of evolution played out in industry is his description of soap powder nozzles and how to improve them by natural selection. Man's breeding of dogs proves how far one can go with un-natural selection in just a few hundred years; think what could happen in a few million! A wonderful read, full of humour and wit, with a wealth of interesting information and mind-expanding explanations.
Gets my *****
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Not for me
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I've given up on this book. I read about 150 pages and was very frustrated. I thought some passages were so bad they were funny. The bits that did interest me left so many questions unanswered that it was annoying, hence my frustration. For example, he describes an experiment where some groups of lizards were moved from one environment to another. He goes on to say that ten years later they had changed. But no explanation - just assumption. Their limbs had become shorter to cope better with thin twigs. So what was the agent of natural selection? Did anyone watch to see what happened? No explanations, just a teleological statement that "natural selection had been at work, daily and hourly scrutinizing every variation, even the slightest, rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good;".
From a popular science book I want to read about interesting facts that I didn't already know and be entertained. Sorry Steve but this book did neither for me.
{addendum: I'd like to clarify my position on evolution in case this review is interpreted by some as being anti-evolution. Evolution is a fact, to believe anything else is to be in the dark ages. As to how exactly evolution took place, that is where the debate should be.}
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