- Hardcover: 236 pages
- Publisher: OUP USA (9 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195144775
- ISBN-13: 978-0195144772
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.2 x 2.4 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,269,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Genes, Categories, and Species
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" ... his casual style and thought-provoking examples are convincing, in a very basic way." (Science )
Product Description
This book is a thorough re-examination of the "species problem", the continuing disagreement among biologists about how best to identify species and what constitutes useful and genuine biological divisions of groups and organisms. This book contributes to our understanding of the scientific issues related to the species concept through an exploration of the reality of biological diversity and of the mental processes behind the ways we recognize species, and how we establish typological categories generally. The text develops a theory of evolutionary groups (groups of DNAs that compete and share in genetic drift and adaptation), and revisits the major issues of modern phylogeny, systematics, and evolutionary biology through this framework.
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First Sentence
Are dogs one species or many species? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Are dogs one species or many species? Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Do you want to stop suffering "the species problem"?, 31 Aug 2001
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Causes of the Species Problem: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Cause of the Species Problem (Hardcover)
Jody Hey's book provides an answer to a problem that has plagued biologists over the past century. Biologists have been suffering "the species problem": how can we come up with a definition for biological species? The word "species" is famous and incredibly popular. Biologists, and newspapers and magazines use the word daily, nature lovers and conservationsist love to count them, and of course Darwin wrote the book that shook the world with "species" in the title. As biologists we have had a burning passion to paint a tidy picture in words to exactly capture what species are. The debate has paraded over numerous books, and has taken up very much journal space. Yet there is no agreement on exactly what a species is! Jody Hey, a theoretical and empirical biologist, has come up with a convincing answer. Hey has weaved together philosophical, psychological, anthropological, and biological information (down to the genetic level) to show us how we have been trying to define the undefinable. Humans love to delineate recurrent patterns in our world, and put them in neat categories. But our categorization process is a very human thing and it has limitations for how we see our world. The species problem, Jody Hey describes, is like "trying to put clouds into boxes." Jody Hey shows us that 'species' are unreal, but that there are things out there in our biological worlds that are real, though fuzzy. These are "evolutionary groups." They are real because evolutionary forces have acted on them in the past, and continue to act on them in the present. Biologists must become comfortable with the notion that biological nature is fuzzy and stop looking for pithy definitions of "species". In this way we can get on with studying the really interesting problems -- how evolutionary processes work.If you are a person interested in discovering how human thinking (and language) can distort our picture of the world, then this book provides a fascinating account. If you are a biologist who uses the word "species", this book is ESSENTIAL reading.
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