Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins

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If you're interested in biological evolution, this is a book you've got to have. A huge collection of articles, arranged alphabetically, but each one interesting in itself. And many are fascinating. It's written for common folks, like me, but few compromises are made with scientific precision. Of special interest to many will be the biographical sketches (of "losers" like Lysenko as well as "winners" up to an including both Charles and Erasmus Darwin). Also covers a lot of frauds and hoaxes (e.g., Piltdown Man). You'll have fun. And even professional evolutionary biologists can expect to learn a lot.

Danger: This encyclopedia is habit-forming. I try to stop at just one entry, but each one is so very interesting that it leads me to more cross-referenced entries and then still more. All in all it seems very even-handed in its tone and treatment of the various contentious theories and theorists. It is indispensable for anyone working with evolution, no matter how versant in evolutionary history, and eminently readable for nonspecialists. The only negative criticism I have of the book is that it lacks an index in the back so that one could track a thread. The cross-references at the end of each article are not as exhaustive as I'd like, so a word index to find every mention of a concept should definitely be considered for subsequent editions.

This book really is a treasure. Richard Milner's encyclopedia is both entertaining and educational. And it's fun. There is no reason the intellectual adventure can be fun. And Milner's book is wonderful.

Richard Milner isn't delivering a book for technical specialists who know the theory anyway, he writing for the intelligent layman and uses wit, humour and sparkling ideas to home deliver one of the biggest ideas of all, Darwin's theory of evolution.

Along the way Milner takes us on side trips to see how the theory of evolution itself evolved, to see how evolution has impacted both religion (and not just Christianity) and popular culture. He introduces us to some of the great characters who have played a role in the rise of evolution. Science is a human enterprise, not a pursuit for robots, and humans like to have fun.

Although I was quite impressed with this work when I first purchased it as time went on I discovered more and more strange omissions and minor errors in the text. At this point I cannot see it as an authoritative source, but instead as a source that needs to be frequently rechecked when I do in-depth research.

Yesterday, for instance, I did some research into Eugene DuBois, the eccentric discover of the Java Man finds. This book says, "By 1935, only one voice was raised claiming that Pithecanthropus was not a man at all, but a very large kind of gibbon-like hominid. Sadly the voice was that of the aged DuBois." Essentially the Java Man finds consisted of a skull cap, three teeth and a femur found in 1891. Controversy arose over interpretation of what he had termed "Pithecanthropus" (now considered a "homo erecti") and some, including DuBois, decided the creature was much more ape-like than it is now considered to be. DuBois ultimately tired of the controversy and in response would not let anyone look at the finds for over 20 years until 1927. At that point, this work seems to suggest, the issue was somehow immediately resolved. However, Earnest A Hooton's 1931 text, "Up from the Ape," makes it very clear (pages 295-296) that the controversy still continued at the time he wrote. The Smithsonian Institution's publication "The Discovery of Primitive Man in China," by G. Elliot Smith, p. 531-533, also makes it clear that the controversy over where to fit these finds was still on-going and far from concluded. "Pithecanthropus" was still still referred to in 1931 as an "ape-man" and few connected it with the Peking Man finds that had just taken place but instead viewed it as a different species.

I cannot imagine that without further significant evidence, the issue was resolved four years later.

Of course, this is just one, arguably minor, example of an error in this book, but I have found similar, minor problems throughout.