Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection [Hardcover]

David J. Depew (Author), Bruce H. Weber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 1994 | ISBN-10: 0262041456 | ISBN-13: 978-0262041454

This work examines the Darwinian research tradition in evolutionary biology from its inception to its turbulent present, arguing that recent advances in modelling the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems may well catalyze the next major phase of Darwinian evolutionism. While Darwinism has successfully resisted reduction to physics, the authors point out that it has from the outset developed and applied its core explanatory concept, natural selection, by borrowing models from dynamics, a branch of physics. The recent development of complex systems dynamics may afford Darwinism yet another occasion to expand its explanatory power. Darwinism's use of dynamical models has received insufficient attention from biologists, historians, and philosophers who have concentrated instead on how evolutionary biology has maintained its autonomy from physics. Yet, as the authors observe, it is only by recovering Darwin's own relationship to Newtonian models of systems dynamics, and genetical Darwinism's relationship to statistical mechanics and probability theory, that insight can be gained into how Darwinism can successfully meet the challenges it is currently facing. Drawing on recent scholarship in the history of biology, this book brings the dynamical perspective to bear on a number of important episodes in the history of the Darwinian research tradition: Darwin's "Newtonian" Darwinism, the rise of "developmentalist" evolutionary theories and the eclipse of Darwinism at the turn of the century, Darwinism's struggles to incorporate genetics, its eventual regeneration in the modern evolutionary synthesis, challenges to that synthesis that have been posed in recent decades by molecular genetics, and recent proposals for meeting those challenges.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This volume by Depew and Weber constitutes an academic contribution of the first rank. What the authors uncover about the past and propose for the future is revolutionary, indeed! They do not pretend to have made a watertight case for extending the Darwinian paradigm, but they certainly lay before the reader a delightful narrative of the possibilities." Robert Ulanowicz, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory of the University of Maryland

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

David J. Depew is Professor of Communication Studies and Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa.

Bruce H. Weber is the Robert Woodworth Professor of Science and Natural Philosophy at Bennington College and Professor of Biochemistry at California State University at Fullerton.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (November 22, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262041456
• ISBN-13: 978-0262041454
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,679,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars intro to history and philosophy of science via darwinism, September 23, 2003

By 

R. M. Williams "just an avid reader" (tucson, arizona USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection (Paperback)

If i could i would rate this 6 stars. It is simply extraordinary, i am at a loss for superlatives to describe it. Thanks to both of the authors for a very pleasant and challenging week spent reading this book.

That is the bad news, it is a very hard read. More than once i wanted to get out a large sheet of paper and begin to diagram the book's information rich structure. Who studied where and with whom? what set of principles did he have? what principles did he invent or significantly modify? what ideas was he principly interested in saving, which was he fighting with? on with words like: transmutation, preformationism, aristotelian embryology etc and names like: democritus, empedocles, von Faer, kant, newton etc etc and that is just 2 paragraphs of a random page. Information dense, detailed, insightful, principled ... again i am at a loss for words.

First, this is obviously not a book for beginners into the field of evolutionary biology, or for that matter, philosophy, history or even math. It presupposes a graduate level vocabulary, and an undergrad smattering of the sciences. Even then it is a joy to discover new words and new worlds, new friends and old acquaintances in new clothing. Simply one of the best books i've read. Or more precisely, the best 3 books i've read. For it is divided into 3 parts, with the common theme the treatment of the history of Darwinian thought and the separation is roughly something like but not quite as broad as a Kuhnian paradigm revolution.

So to reflect that division, i thought of writing 3 reviews. But figured that only those with the desire to read the book would finish even one. So to them i address the rest of this review, an unabased desire to encourage you to get and read this book.

The book is a historical analysis of Darwinian evolutionary biology's(EB) THEORY. "this book is about the intellectual constructs by which discoveries about evolution are guided, assembled, and justified as contributions to knowledge." 1st page introduction.

What is the big picture?
Darwinism as (metaphysical) research program.
It begins with the idea of natural selection(NS) as the core concept of a research tradition that is to be judged on its explanatory power, fruitfulness, and dynamics. The secondary big issue is common descent, which doesnt play nearly as big a role as NS. Its history is to be understood in the scientific context of the day, and the changes that occur over the 150 years between us and Darwin. In particular what was the model science of Newtonian physics and its philosophic principles, to be emulated in EB, that was Darwin's big contribution, he built a system that was seen by the various factions in biology as a biology in the manner of Newton.

From there the authors take off running. A very complex but terribly interesting story emerges from Darwin's education, his family, his Voyage of the Beagle, his social and cultural milieu. Not in general hand-waving platitudes but in detailed, closely watched, carefully argued specifics. Something like the division of labor in Adam Smith and the relationship of it to adaptions of creatures into biological niches in the midst of a general construction of adaption and transformation takes 4 pages.With a whole chapter 5 "The newton of a blade of grass: darwin and the political economists", my initial reason for picking up the book.

The three parts represent a watershed change(paradigm revolution?) in the way math fed into physics and then into EB. Newton and calculus for part 1, Boltzmann, and statistics for part 2, and chaos theory/non linear dynamics for part 3. (deterministic, probabilistic, chaotic)

The nicest thing about the book is to see the effect of the world on EB theory. Not just things like the analogy of capitalist competition compared to biological competition. But things like fruit flies to Russia, then Russia becoming a huge outdoors genetics lab contributor to the world and sending people back to the US to carry on the insights and feed them back into biology theory. Just neat stuff, insightful, a human story of science that you don't often get from a textbook.

So get the book. just leave a week to read it....worth every minute. i ended up wishing i had diagrammed the book, or was a fraction as smart or as clever as these authors.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, beautfully written, learned and accessible., November 1, 1997

By 

[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection (Paperback)

This overlooked book is by far the best book in science I have read in a very long time and is as important as Kuhn. I urge readers interested in the major ideas of science - from Plato to nonlinear dynamics - to buy this book. It is beautifully written, elegant in its thought, embracing of the reader, and enormously suggestive.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars admirable, November 24, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Ann Arbor) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection (Paperback)

An excellent and articulate summary/commentary of the history of natural selection. Complexity theory is covered with taste and intelligence, and not with the silliness that dominates many popular science books. Highly recommended.