- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press; illustrated edition edition (14 Oct 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300108656
- ISBN-13: 978-0300108651
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,174,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma
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Review
"Kirschner and Gerhart address some of the most interesting questions in current biology with enthusiasm and intellectual boldness. A remarkable advance in understanding evolution." Alan H. Brush, Emeritus, University of Connecticut"
The Independent, 16th December 2005
'...highly recommended...insightful...powerful ammunition on the side of good...a good read.'
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Physical scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had astounding success in formulating very general yet predictive theories in thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, and atomic structure. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Physical scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had astounding success in formulating very general yet predictive theories in thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, and atomic structure. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The preface to this book asked forebearance from the scientist that they have "largely skirted the jargon and qualifying phrases emblematic of scientific writing". That phrase alone should have been an omen of what was to come. I am afraid if this book was "keeping it simple", it failed miserably for me. At the end of it, I was simply not convinced I knew what the authors meant by "facilitated variation" - which was basically their aim in writing the book. I think that they were trying to say that there were some "core (cell) processes" coded in our DNA that evolved about a 3 billion years ago that enabled evolution. And that these processes haven't changed much. But by the weak anthropic principle, if they had changed and it mattered, would we be here now discussing it now? I therefore probably got it all wrong. The authors seem to have taken the view that if they said the same thing many times, the reader would eventually understand it no matter how it was explained.
I am happy to take the blame for not understanding the convoluted and repetitive language (and worse still, English). This is the second book I have bought on evolutionary biology and both seem to suffer the same contorted writing style. I am not a molecular biologist, but I am a PhD engineer with an almost obsessional interest in science. But perception is reality, and I don't think I am unrepresentative of others who would find the subject of this book interesting. Furthermore, had I written this book, I would want to know if it achieved its aim.
On the positive side, I did pick up some extremely interesting facts about evolution (especially cell evolution) that I didn't know before, and I thank the authors for taking the occassional detour with albeit with the intention of explaining their proposition.
I am happy to take the blame for not understanding the convoluted and repetitive language (and worse still, English). This is the second book I have bought on evolutionary biology and both seem to suffer the same contorted writing style. I am not a molecular biologist, but I am a PhD engineer with an almost obsessional interest in science. But perception is reality, and I don't think I am unrepresentative of others who would find the subject of this book interesting. Furthermore, had I written this book, I would want to know if it achieved its aim.
On the positive side, I did pick up some extremely interesting facts about evolution (especially cell evolution) that I didn't know before, and I thank the authors for taking the occassional detour with albeit with the intention of explaining their proposition.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I liked what this book was trying to say, but perhaps not the way the authors tried to say it. The book is about the origin of variation. Darwin's natural selection tells us the fate of variation, but nothing about its origin. The theory presented in this book tries to fill the gap and tell us why offspring tend to vary from parents in viable ways which appear non-random.
I read a bit on evolution and exploit evolutionary principles to evolve solutions to problems using evolutionary computation (EC) for my PhD research. The theory sounds very plausible to me, though I am a computer scientist and not an evolutionary biolgist.
My main concern with this book was its language and readability. Given that the book was partly aimed at subduing creationists and intelligent design, the use of the word "design" to describe emergent entities are totally inappropriate, yet the authors use it as such. The also seems to ramble a lot, and if I didnt know anything about evolution I know I would have got quite frustrated with it and not understood the point. Parts of the book read very well, however, and I think a bit more care in explaining the concepts would have made the book a real joy. The authors should perhaps take a look at Ernst Mayr's "What evolution is" for pointers and good writing.
If you are interested in evolution and evolvability, however, this book is a must because it fills a gap in evolutionary thinking that has been missing since the birth of Darwinian evolution.
I read a bit on evolution and exploit evolutionary principles to evolve solutions to problems using evolutionary computation (EC) for my PhD research. The theory sounds very plausible to me, though I am a computer scientist and not an evolutionary biolgist.
My main concern with this book was its language and readability. Given that the book was partly aimed at subduing creationists and intelligent design, the use of the word "design" to describe emergent entities are totally inappropriate, yet the authors use it as such. The also seems to ramble a lot, and if I didnt know anything about evolution I know I would have got quite frustrated with it and not understood the point. Parts of the book read very well, however, and I think a bit more care in explaining the concepts would have made the book a real joy. The authors should perhaps take a look at Ernst Mayr's "What evolution is" for pointers and good writing.
If you are interested in evolution and evolvability, however, this book is a must because it fills a gap in evolutionary thinking that has been missing since the birth of Darwinian evolution.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A key gap in our knowledge of evolution theory until recently has been understanding how signals from genes translate into complex cellular processes that form the organism. Natural selection simply tells us nothing. H.H. Whyte pointed to this problem 50 years ago as others had before him. Developmental biology is now providing us with some surprising answers and Kirschner and Gerhart provide an interesting new theory to help. They argue that we know that the embryo organises itself at a very early stage so that groups of cells develop along very different but constrained pathways. Between the compartments of the embryo linkages are weak so that different compartments have the capacity to change without adversely influencing the rest of the organism. However certain key processes are very highly constrained and cannot change - this keeps basic processes and genes common to all organsms. Evolution takes place as a result of different groups of cells in different embryo compartments developing in novel but constrained ways. Such is the flexibility of developmental biology that the opportunities for change are immense. Sadly this idea is related to a neo-Darwinian model and here the book stumbles - no attempt is made to link it to other vital theories concerned with bio-chemistry and biophysics which are well tested and very important to our understanding of evolution, (see Goodwin "How the Leopard Changed its Spots"), nor do they understand that the environment is an important factor in evolution. Use of words like design, mechanism, etc. are also unhelpful, but the design creationist opponents of evolution now have their work cut out if they are even to begin to offer a viable alternative to evolution theory. This book makes an important contribution to evolution theory, but neo-Darwinism it is not.
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