11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly Good Science for Such Plain English, November 7, 2006
This review is from: Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom (Hardcover)
I read a lot of magazine and Internet articles about science and written in plain English for general readers. The science is usually vague and often inaccurate. Wallace Arthur manages to get across real science while avoiding jargon. For example, the old biology cliché "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is rendered as "development repeats evolution". This is followed by a few paragraphs of explanation. And he covers a number of topics which are important for understanding evolution that aren't generally included id beginners' books.
The most important of these is gene duplication. The machinery that manages our DNA sometimes makes extra copies of one or more genes. The duplicate copies may then undergo mutation and take on new functions while the old ones remain unchanged. A LOT of evolution involves gene duplication. Arthur doesn't say how gene duplication happens - that requires biochemistry - but it is important to know that it happens.
Another topic is development, from egg to adult. This is critical for understanding the evolution of complexity. Some genes involved in development, such as the Hox genes that Arthur mentions, are important in evolution. Copying of Hox genes is a major factor in the increasing complexity of animals; some more advanced books have charts showing the parallel between Hox gene duplication and increasing complexity. The interaction of genes and proteins is another important topic. And there are other topics, too much for me to cover in a short review.
Arthur frequently pauses to relate a current topic to what came earlier in the book, or to suggest what is to come. People who read a lot of science books are used to doing this for themselves and might be annoyed by Arthur's doing it. But for true beginners, this will probably be helpful.
Creatures of Accident provides only a beginning look at the natural processes that give rise to complexity. A number of other books - all more advanced - go into the subject in more depth. I have reviewed several of these and I recommend them. Click above on "See all my reviews" for more. There is also a brief summary in my Listmania list "Natural Processes That Promote Evolution". To find it, click on my name, above, and scroll down my profile page to that title. I will mention here that Sean B. Carroll's The Making of the Fittest is an excellent next book for someone who has read Creatures of Accident; a reader who has had a decent HS biology course might want to start with that book. Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful would be suitable for a college course, but is suitable for readers who are not bio students. Darwin in the Genome by Lynn Caporale looks at the evolution of those natural processes themselves. There are a number of very good books ranging from elementary to some suitable for graduate bio majors.
Creatures of Accident won't convince anybody that the ID claim is false; there's not enough detail for that. But it will give beginners a start to learning what evolution is really about. And that means the prospect of a lot of exciting reading ahead.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable read, though limited in depth, October 30, 2006
This review is from: Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom (Hardcover)
Arthur Wallace's book is an informal account of how biological complexity has arisen in the evolutionary history of life. The book is written in a conversational style and the individual chapters are short, giving the reader the satisfying feeling that he is `getting somewhere'. It is clear that Wallace, a professor of zoology, knows his subject well. While I agree with the author's thesis that the evolution of complexity can be largely explained through Darwinian evolution by natural selection (that is, without invoking additional mechanisms or anything supernatural or mysterious like an `intelligent designer'), I found the book generally disappointing in its lack of detail concerning the evidence supporting the account he proposes (which I feel could have been encapsulated in a brief essay instead of a full-length book). Wallace notes that a basic strategy for creating novelty and for building biological complexity can be expressed in just a few words: Duplication, Diversification, and Co-option- old genetic tools and morphological elements doing new tricks. Co-option (or `exaptation') is the process by which a structure or system with an original function adds or changes to a new function, a process which is enabled by redundancy and duplication. These ideas are not new, having been discussed in greater depth by a number of other evolutionary biologists and geneticists. While it is good to see them summarized succinctly in this book, there is a frustrating paucity of detail concerning specific examples of this evolutionary process. Wallace stresses the important role of alterations in developmental pathways as engines of evolutionary novelty, an idea which is also not new and embodied in the field of "Evo-Devo" (the study of evolution from a developmental perspective). However, discussion of Evo-Devo in the book is frustratingly limited (for readers seeking greater depth, I recommend Sean Carroll's book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful).
Wallace concludes that evolutionary history, at least in its broad strokes, is probably more predictable than has been acknowledged by other scientists stressing evolutionary contingency and divergence (e.g., S.J. Gould). Replaying the tape of life on Earth or on other Earth-like planets would probably yield similar (though certainly not identical) biological designs and would likely display similar evolutionary trajectories, at least on a coarse-grained scale. The fact of evolutionary convergence is often cited as evidence in support of this prediction (see Simon Conway-Morris's work for a rich account of evolutionary convergence). While I generally agree with Wallace's assessment, I found Wallace's case for evolutionary repeatability to be unsatisfying (for readers seeking a more persuasive and detailed argument for the repeatability and predictability of biological evolution see David Darling's book, Life Everywhere).
The author rightly dismisses so-called intelligent design (ID) as an explanation for life, biological complexity, and adaptation, claiming that the processes of divergence, duplication, and co-option occurring within a framework of Darwinian natural selection are sufficient to account for the evolution of biological complexity. While this may very well be the case (and I tend to agree), Wallace devotes little attention to how specific biological structures claimed by ID supporters to be "irreducibly complex" could have evolved via the strategies he mentions. Instead, he simply dismisses ID as "crass nonsense", without detailing precisely why it is so. In my opinion, it behooves the author to provide a much deeper critique of ID than he offers (for some excellent critiques of ID, see Young and Edis's Why Intelligent Design Fails, Perakh's Unintelligent Design, and Shanks' God, the Devil and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory).
Finally, Wallace describes himself as "a committed agnostic" with regard to God's existence and asserts that "committed atheism" is just as much of a faith position as is "committed theism". He cites Richard Dawkins as an example of a "convinced atheist". Dawkins may be "convinced", but he is not "committed", however. At least according to his most recent book, The God Delusion, Dawkins admits that he would give up his atheism if there were powerful evidence in support of theism. But Dawkins's atheism is hardly a dogmatic position- rather it is an intellectually honest and sensible one, which derives from following reason and evidence wherever they may lead. Wallace suggests that there is no evidence either for or against God's existence and that therefore the appropriate position is that of agnosticism. However, there is indeed evidence, both direct and background, which counts against the God hypothesis, thereby rendering the existence of God more improbable than not (for instance, one piece of evidence against the God hypothesis is that minds and intelligence are the derivative result of biological evolution- not primary- and that thought requires a physical substrate, e.g., a physical brain, in order to occur). How Wallace's "committed agnosticism" is not itself an example of "faith-based" dogmatism is beyond this reviewer's capacity to comprehend. Is there no evidence that in principle could sway him either way on the question of God's existence? Is Wallace a "committed agnostic" concerning the existence of fairies, ghosts, goblins, a host of pagan gods, and the "Flying Spaghetti Monster"? Does Wallace truly evaluate the probability that these extraordinary entities exist to be at 50 percent? If not, then what is the warrant for Wallace's "committed agnosticism" concerning the existence of God?
Wallace also blames Stalinist atrocities on the "faith of atheism". Overlooking Wallace's mistaken view that atheism (at least that which is the outcome of careful reasoning and an honest consideration of evidence) is "faith-based", Wallace's suggestion that Stalin's acts were done in the name of atheism is uncritical at best and misleading at worst. Arguably, the massacres of Stalin's reign were committed in the name of Socialist ideology, not atheism. His atheism (if indeed he was an atheist) appeared to be largely incidental, and not an essential motivation for his barbarous acts. At least Wallace's condemnation of atheism as the cause of Stalin's atrocities deserves a far more critical analysis than is offered in his book. And even if atheism was the primary motivation behind Stalin's acts (which is debatable), this does not thereby make theism or agnosticism any more intellectually defensible.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A top pick for both public and school holdings., December 13, 2006
This review is from: Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom (Hardcover)
Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom comes from a renowned professor of zoology in Ireland who delves into the weighty-sounding science of 'evolutionary developmental biology' - and while it may seem like this book is for college-level holdings, it will appeal equally well to general public library collections with its easy introduction to evolutionary theory. From analyses of the structure of life forms and the complex methods of evolution which are neither predictable nor straightforward to conflicts between creationism and evolutionary theory, this book provides both general reader and science readers with an easily-understood set of explanations, making it a top pick for both public and school holdings.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
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