Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated [Paperback]

Steve Jones (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 3, 2001

Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is probably the best-known, least-read book. One of the most important achievements of the past millennium, it did for biology what Galileo did for astronomy: made it into a single science rather than a collection of unrelated facts. Important though Origin remains, its examples and intricate Victorian prose are now a century and a half old. They are ripe for renewal and reaffirmation. Writing as "Darwin's ghost," eminent geneticist Steve Jones updates this seminal work—and restates evolution's case for the 21st century.

Jones is a writer of engaging wit and dazzling erudition and has been called "the British Carl Sagan." Using modern examples—the AIDS virus, the puzzles of sexual selection, the physiology and psychology of pets, and the unparalleled genetic success of our own species—he shows the power and immediacy of Darwin's great argument and makes us appreciate how it makes life make sense. Eye-opening and entertaining, filled with astonishing facts, amusing anecdotes, and the very latest research, Darwin's Ghost is contemporary science writing at its very best.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 377 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; (2nd) edition (April 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345422775
• ISBN-13: 978-0345422774
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Evolution > Organic

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat disappointing August 9, 2001

By MT

I'm a bit surprised at some of the rave reviews. Although grand in its aspirations, the book only occasionally met my expectations (e.g., his discussion of HIV). I found Jones' writing style difficult - full of wit, yes, but often at the expense of clarity. I enjoyed the beginning and end of the book, but found the bulk of it tedious and wordy - not unlike the original, I guess.

This would not be a particularly good book for someone wrestling with the Big Question of design vs. evolution. Although Jones gives many, many supporting examples and facts for various aspects of evolution, they are from the beginning asserted as solid proof - he does not lead the novice reader "gently" through the accumulation of evidence. In addition, he does not provide footnotes for the many claims, and it is difficult to tell which of them are solid, thoroughly-accepted and which are opinions du jour. It often felt like he was preaching to the choir (certainly not what Darwin did or intended). This is a disservice to the reader who really wants to understand the relative depth of the various arguments and facts.

Despite my reservations, I enjoyed some of the book - especially the last chapter (which is Darwin's concluding chapter).

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointing! Darwin's ghost must be feeling very uneasy... May 26, 2005

By Georgios V. Kallis

I expected to find an easy and enjoyable introduction to Darwin's original. I ended up reading only the extracts from Darwin's original. How much more rationally structured and carefully exposed were Darwin's ideas and how sad the contrast with Jones' clumsy arguments and unstructured accumulation of examples. I needed no convinving about evolution against creationism. I was looking though for an adequate exposition of the alternative theories of evolution. Jones takes adaptionist/genetically-determined evolution as the "truth" and he discards alternative views in a few sentences (in his view "punctuated equilibrium" theories have been rejected....I wonder what Gould would have to say about it...). And while rejecting both in the intro and the conclusions that biological evolution can be extrapolated into human affairs, the book is full of unfounded anthropomorphic examples (e.g. cities "struggling for survival", some surviving and others vanishing!). No doubt that the acknowledgement of Lewontin, a radical Harvard biologist, at the first page of the book was the one that fooled me. The book is a tribute to Dawkins' and Spencerian ideas of evolution, not the complex evolution that Lewontin, Gould, Eldrege and others write about.

The book is the perfect example of what popular science writing SHOULD NOT BE. In order to make science accessible to the public, contestable theories are presented as undoubted "truths" and long and complex scientific debates muted.

Dr Giorgos Kallis, University of California at Berkeley

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not the Origin of Species updated August 17, 2011

By John Duncan

Even before opening the book, its subtitle "The Origin of Species updated" is a source of irritation. Whether this is the author's own estimation of his efforts, or a bit of advertising puff added by the publisher, it is ridiculous, suggesting that Darwin's masterpiece can no longer be read for its own sake. Darwin called his book "one long argument", and that is what it is, a long coherent collection of evidence that leads inexorably to his conclusion that natural selection provides the best explanation of evolution. Of course, we know many things today that Darwin didn't know, but surprisingly little of his book has become seriously dated. A thoroughly annotated edition of the book itself (preferably the 1st and best edition) would certainly be useful -- noting where Darwin diluted his message in the later editions, and pointing to more recent observations that amplify, confirm, or occasionally contradict his ideas -- but simply rewriting it as a pile of incoherent and loosely connected sentences is most definitely not what was needed. The page of quotations from enthusiastic reviews, such as "Darwin's Ghost engagingly reworks [Darwin's] story into an enthralling read", suggests that most of these reviewers saw a different book from the one I have in front of me, or lazily based their opinions on the publisher's description.

One long argument is exactly what Steve Jones's book is not. Instead it is a long series of statements, some of them interesting and important, but with little or no coherence. Certainly, one can read the whole book with profit, and one can learn a lot from it, but it is not a pleasurable read, let alone an enthralling one.... Indeed, in some of the early chapters, particularly the first, mainly about AIDS, I wondered if I was going to be able to struggle through to the end. However, some parts of the book are much better, in particular Chapter VII, on instinct, which came closest to being "enthralling". Another high point came with the explanation of why fish from the Red Sea have been very successful at invading the Mediterranean since the Suez Canal was opened, but Mediterranean fish have been far less successful in invading the Red Sea. Mysterious at first (as with other similar examples) it makes sense when you realize that the Mediterranean was dry relatively recently (in geological terms) and was initially stocked by Atlantic fish that have had too little time to become thoroughly adapted to its warmer water.

Throughout the book the author falls into the trap of preferring cuteness to clarity, for example when he tells us that "some bugs [he means bacteria] rarely indulge [in sex], others enjoy it [enjoy it! you need to be a lot more complex than a bacterial cell to enjoy anything] on demand, and in many ingenious ways. For them, venereal disease [except that from the point of view of the bacterium it is not a disease but an adaptation] developed early on [yes, probably, but how does he know?]." A different sort of cuteness is manifested at the beginning of each chapter, where instead of a list of topics we get the corresponding list for Darwin's book, which isn't much help for learning what the chapter will discuss. Likewise at the end of most chapters the "Summary of Chapter" presents not a summary of the chapter we have been reading, but Darwin's summary of his own chapter. He is also very careless about presenting facts. He tells us, for example, that an explosion at Passchendaele in 1917 was the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history. Has he not heard of Santorini, I thought when I read this, or, if the Santorini explosion was too long ago to be considered history, of Krakatoa, which exploded well within living memory for people alive in 1917. Well yes, he has heard of Krakatoa, as he tells about it later on in the book, but seems not to have noticed that it contradicts a "fact" that he presented less than 50 pages earlier.

After I decided to write a not very enthusiastic review I read through others that have appeared at Amazon. Some of the one- and two-star reviews are written by creationists who show little sign of having actually read the book, and are of no interest. There are some serious ones as well, and these have noted some of the same faults as I have. Giving only one or two stars seems too harsh, but I don't see how one can justify more than three. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Intellectual Feast April 4, 2002

By James R. Mccall

This book purports to "update" Darwin's Origin of Species. But, as Jones says, "It would be presumptuous to present this essay as more than a shadow of its original, in content or in form." Moreover, "The Origin is...a work of high Victorian seriousness, with no concession to any desire to be entertained. In these more flippant times I yield to the temptation to leaven a scientific narrative with tales from the curious history of evolution and those who study it."

Ok, fair enough. So, what is this book's intended audience? In Darwin's case, he was writing to the educated lay person of his day, which mostly meant Victorian gentlemen of conventional morality and religion, but interested in science, and with minds that could follow an argument and be changed. But he was writing to scientists mainly, and was acutely conscious of the need to be comprehensive, clear, and conservative as regards the evidence, and rigorous in argument.

Jones is not writing to convince his audience that all the variety of life that we see about us arose out of simpler forms (or, even, just one simple type of proto-creature) by descent with modification over eons of time, with the environment doing the selective breeding, as it were. His audience should already believe that. (Those that most vehemently do not are certainly not addressed here.) Rather, he is giving us an informal survey of natural history in its great and entertaining variety, using Darwin's great argument as a "scaffolding" upon which to hang his discussions. Throughout he implicitly assumes that you accept the reality of evolution. What he is doing is guiding you through its implications and outcomes in a great number of ways.... Thus, for example, Darwin used the chaotic nature of the geologic strata to argue for various events that could fold rocks or raise ancient seabeds up to the tops of mountains by referring to Lyell's theories, which were still controversial. Jones simply assumes we believe the by-now-well-established facts of geology, and uses these to discuss the spottiness and contrariness of the fossil record.

Thus, Jones has a much easier task than Darwin had, so can have more fun with his material. And he does have fun, and so will you. This book is entertaining and enlightening: if you are familiar with the main arguments for evolution, it will remind you of them, and enrich your feeling for them. Jones talks widely about nature and the issues raised by natural selection. However, if you have never before encountered arguments for natural selection ("descent with modification"), then perhaps you should consult some more diagrammatic and focused work that lays bare the logic behind it. And then read this book. Read more ›