Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of the Species Updated

Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of the Species Updated

Charles Darwin's masterpiece, The Origin of Species , is probably the best-known, least-read book. Un-questionably one of the most important achievements of the millennium, its publication in 1859 caused a sensation, because it forced mankind to see itself as part of the animal world--a notion that hundreds of millions still deny. Darwin's theory of common descent did for biology what Galileo did for astronomy: made it into a single science rather than a collection of unrelated facts. Those facts, however, are now a century and a half old, as are The Origin 's illustrative examples and Victorian prose style. Writing as "Darwin's ghost," the well-known geneticist Steve Jones has drawn on our ever-expanding scientific knowledge and the brilliant logic set out in The Origin to restate evolution's case for the twenty-first century.          Jones has been called "the British Carl Sagan" because of his prominence as a popularizer of science. Using contemporary examples--the AIDS virus, the rules of the American Kennel Club, the sheep who never forget a face and the garbage that floats in the Pacific--he shows the power and imme-diacy of Darwin's great argument. Filled with anec-dotes, humor and the very latest research, Darwin's Ghost is a popular, readable and comprehensive account of the science that makes life make sense. Biologists have a dirty little secret: while practically everyone knows of The Origin of Species (and owes much to it), almost nobody has read it. British geneticist Steve Jones wants to make the arguments contained in that great text accessible to modern audiences, and succeeds with the delightful Darwin's Ghost . Approximating the structure of Darwin's opus, Jones uses the original chapter headings and summaries as a scaffolding to build an up-to-date demonstration of the power of a few simple ideas. Heredity, variation, and natural selection are all you need to infer evolution over time, and now that Jones can fill in the gaps in Darwin's pre-Mendelian understanding of genetics, the case becomes airtight. More than a polemic, though, Darwin's Ghost is nearly as pleasurable a read as its ancestor is--one suspects that part of Jones's mission is to inspire today's readers to turn back to the grand but humble Origin of Species . While he may not be able to quite match Darwin's vast erudition or hawk's eye for detail, he still makes the theory of evolution shudder and breathe on the page. Dog breeding, mass extinctions, and weird fossils of tiny elephants all march to his drumbeat and--just when you least expect it--return to the main point that all living things share a common ancestor. Whether you're one of the elite who's had the pleasure of Darwin's literary company or you'd like a taste of what you're missing, Darwin's Ghost will bring the spirit of the great man back into your world of ideas. --Rob Lightner Using recent empirical evidence, Jones (genetics, Univ. Coll., London) has updated Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (l859) so that the fact of organic evolution is both understandable and relevant to today's general reader. He focuses on dogs, whales, snails, insects, bacteria, and, particularly, the AIDS retrovirus in order to illustrate the struggle for existence and descent with modification through genetic variation and natural selection. Special attention is given to social instincts, biogeography, biodiversity, and the evolutionary affinities among similar species through a common descent. The author stresses that all species and their environments are continuously changing (sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly), e.g., the organisms and their habitats on the Galapagos and Hawaiian Islands. Furthermore, since Darwin's writings, serious problems with the theory of evolution are being solved in light of ongoing scientific discoveries in population genetics, geopaleontology, and radiometric dating techniques. Very informative and cogently argued, this book is an important addition to the natural history literature. Recommended for all science collections. -H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. One hundred forty-one years after Darwin's opus was published, evolution continues to be rejected by many people. Jones, a British geneticist, possesses the popular touch and deploys it in this mighty effort to explain, for anyone with an open mind, the logic of the theory. His organization emulates the original chapters and subheadings of Darwin's book, though Jones' illustrations of the actions of evolution are altered for familiarity to contemporaries: in Darwin's day, an example used was the breeding of pigeons; in Jones' book, it's the mutation of HIV viruses. Jones' command of biological knowledge and adroitness in presenting it would be for naught but for the forcefulness of his discussion of Darwin's principles: the imperfectibility of reproduction, the slight advantages (or disadvantages) conferred by such imp