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Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on the Galápagos Islands

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Mr. Larson has written one of the most interesting books about evolution and the Galapagos that it has been my happy experience to read. Although I have had the good fortune to visit the Galapagos and observe the animals and plants there, I had many missing segments in my understanding of how scientific thinking got from Charles Darwin to the work of the Grants that is so well displayed in The Beak of the Finch. This volume creates a nice overview for anyone who wants to know more about how our current understanding of evolution occurred or how any important new paradigm develops.

Most people would not have noticed what Darwin did when he visited the Galapagos in 1835 on The Beagle. To make that point, Mr. Larson opens with many quotes from Melville's visit in 1841. Melville hated the place. "But the special curse . . . is that change never comes." Brief visitors often missed the dynamism of the environment because they only made brief stays. Having been there in both the dry and the rainy seasons, I can assure you that the islands are totally different in those two times of the year. And no two rainy seasons are all that similar.

I was especially fascinated to see how much the economic usefulness of the islands affected how they were perceived. These are mostly desert islands with little fresh water in the dry season, and few are going there primarily to farm.

The book has several threads. One looks at how perceptions of the islands have changed. Now, most would agree that they are a world treasure. Poor people from Ecuador are most eager to move there and develop their lives economically from fishing and serving the rapidly increasing numbers of eco-tourists.

Another considers the impact that visits by man has had on the islands. Extinction has been more man-made than environment-made in the last 166 years. This has both been caused by farming, adding new species, and overusing the fragile resources there.

A third dimension looks at the future of eco-tourism, and sees this as both a great risk and a potential saving grace from suffering the "tragedy of the commons."

A fourth dimension is how research methods have changed to allow us to better understand evolution. As the Grants and others have shown, evolution occurs much more rapidly than Darwin ever imagined from the fossil records. Part of this is due to interspecies breeding that was not appreciated until recently. Also, environmental stress can cause sudden shifts in populations to favor the new conditions. The Grants' work with Darwin's finches (ironically, Darwin was more interested in mockingbirds) shows that you can get evolution away from a beak standard and back again in just a few years on an island as the food supply changes.

I came away especially impressed by the need to do longitudinal studies, to have accurate samples and measurement, and to have careful evaluation of the data. Many errors cropped up in the thinking of both those who opposed the theory of evolution and those who developed it due to errors in one or more of these areas.

The book is filled with a lot of subtle, dry humor. When you see juxtaposed views and experiences (which is quite often), assume that you are being invited to have a good laugh. The comparisons of Darwin and Melville in the beginning set that up for you. Keep looking for this humor through to the observations about sexual selection operating with the fashion models in the end.

Even if you can never visit the Galapagos, you should realize that there is an important message that they contain for us all: Life can evolve in more peaceful and colorful ways even in a hostile environment. The birds and animals there do not run from you. The cacti do not have stickers to hurt you. The sexual colorings of males are truly amazing.

How can we create and live in environments on earth that will make the best home for all life?

When you think of the Galapagos Islands, you think of Darwin, his finches, and the Theory of Evolution. That is, of course, as it should be; evolution is the overarching explanation of biology and although its evidence is all over, it is spectacularly shown in these equatorial and isolated islands. The islands' connection to Darwin is a great story, but it is not the whole story of the Galapagos. A successful attempt to tell the whole story is _Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on The Galapagos Islands_ (Basic Books) by Edward J. Larson. If you are interested in evolution, or if you are going to join the growing numbers of tourists who are heading to the islands, this is a vital book.

Darwin, visiting the islands as the naturalist on the _HMS Beagle_ in 1835, confirmed what his predecessors had seen: "The country was compared to what we might image the cultivated parts of the Infernal regions to be." That was the classic view of the Galapagos, which Darwin would rewrite. He wrote in his private notes as he voyaged home, "The zoology of the Archipelagoes will be well worth examining; for such facts would undermine the stability of species." When he was reading Malthus on population and resources three years later, he hit on the mechanism by which speciation could occur.

Larson tells the stories of the collectors who brought the specimens for academics to study, and how the specimens at first confirmed evolution, and then gave details about its mechanisms. He shows how the philosophy of science has been changed by regarding the islands, were there is death, waste, and indifference. Nonetheless, some biologists (most famously Agassiz) have seen nothing but confirmation of Genesis.

Larson's entertaining and comprehensive book winds up with a summary of how the Galapagos fit into our current world. The islands are prized as jewels of science, but for decades, popularization in books, film, and television have made them targets for eco-tourists or just tourists. It can be shown that the increased tourism has had benefits to the species precariously placed on their little rocks, but the cost of bringing more of the inevitable outside rats, seeds, and insects may be high. Already there are those who go to the Galapagos just for surfing tournaments, and insist on a nightlife, so Larson is not completely optimistic about how well preservation can survive. He gives an amusing symbol of ambiguity towards the book's end, a supermodel posed for the 1998 swimsuit issue of _Sports Illustrated_, whose depicted bare leg had the superimposed text "Charles Darwin's observations of animals here laid the foundation for his theory of evolution." Larson jokes, "Sexual selection apparently played a feature role in this version of the theory."

Edward Larson's chronicle of the explorers and scientists visiting the lonely archipelago of the Galapagos America is a treasure. He conveys his knowledge of its visitors, its legends and its place in the world with matchless skill. This book merits a respected place in any library of science and exploration.

Once viewed as a glimpse of Hell, the Galapagos was later transformed as the place best exhibiting life's workings. Early visitors, whether Spanish, Dutch or American, saw them as divine rejects. So remote were they, according to Larson, that pirates successfully used them as a hideaway. English explorers like Cook and Vancouver simply passed them by. Herman Melville, of Moby Dick fame, manifested his aversion to their dark desolation. This negative outlook was changed by one man. The central role played by the Galapagos in Darwin's faith-shattering idea that life isn't divinely originated can't be overstated. Today, many naturalists consider the islands a shrine to reason and science.

Larson establishes the value of the islands in his description of European astonishment at the sight of life in the New World. While no mythical monsters emerged to view, it was clear that all forms of life there were different from European examples. In Larson's view, explaining this conundrum forced the theory of "special creation" - the Christian deity spent a great deal of energy supplying life forms to each region of the globe. It was so special that in the Galapagos unique species were assigned places on each island separately. This challenge to logic gave naturalists a desire for a better explanation. It took Charles Darwin's visit and a further two decades of his thinking to come up with the correct answer. That solution was evolution by natural selection, and Larson spends most of the book in showing how the islands remain pivotal in applying Darwin's insight to events still transpiring there.

Larson relates the numerous expeditions sent by American researchers during the early 20th Century. Perceiving the reduced populations of many species, especially tortoises, they proceeded to slaughter large numbers in order to "learn more about them before they're exterminated." This twisted logic had the virtue of attracting more attention on the islands' role in revealing how evolution works. According to Larson, David Lack, in studying the multiple forms of Galapagos finches, projected Darwin's concept in understandable detail. Coining the term "Darwin's Finches" he created a phrase still used in biology texts. The research on those finches has taken a highly detailed aspect. Larson, discovering Jonathan Weiner's "The Beak of the Finch," adds his tribute to the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on Daphne Major. Weiner's account need not be repeated here, but all readers are encouraged to obtain his book. The Grants have confirmed Darwin as no other studies have done.

The clash of national interests and scientific research has brought the islands and their natural inhabitants close to grief. Once the site of a prison colony, now the Charles Darwin research station is the target of attention. Visitors arrive daily, and solitary residents are found in remote hideaways. With occupants and explorers bringing goats, rats and other visitors, maintaining the original environment has proved impossible. The Grants have sustained their programme only because Daphne Major remains isolated. Calls by the scientific community to restrain invasion haven't been ignored, but isolation is no longer feasible. Larson avoids judgmental statements, acknowledging that the islands' chief attraction is eco- tourism. With a permanent resident population, encouraging visitors is a major source of income. Conservation efforts, he maintains, are effective, but visitor numbers continue to impact the environment. And more visitors means an enlarging resident population to serve them. Recently, those residents have resisted conservation efforts, sometimes violently, as they, too, struggle to survive an inhospitable realm. Larson depicts this unending story with guarded optimism for improved recognition of the value of evolution's workshop. We can but hope that this book will provide further impetus to balance the needs of Galapagos inhabitants, animal and people alike.

Must reading for any Galapagos traveler or historian of science. Starting with a contrast of Melville's description of Galapagos as a hell and Darwin's own explorations, Larson traces the history of the idea of evolution, both scientifically and on popular thought. By focusing on the Galapagos, Larson provides a readable account of both how studies in the Galapagos shaped evolutionary thought (From Darwin to Lack to the Grants) but also how the social climate of the day, influenced the explorers, for example how the exuberance of Teddy Roosevelt, affected explorers of the day, or how Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz influenced the California collecting spree.

Larson also reflects on the effects of civilization on the Galapagos, from turtle collecting, to the World War II airstrip at Baltra, to current tensions between protection, locals, and harvest. Science has not always been on the side of protection, for example, "Save them for science" became the cry (at the turn of the last century), even if it meant capturing or killing the last on in the wild. The drawings and photographs complement the text, and include such treats as a photo of Louis Agassiz, sketches from Darwin, and a photo of 250 tortoise specimens in the California Academy of Sciences. I would also recommend Weiner's "The Beak of the Finch", and Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle" has a chapter on the Galapagos. Incidentally, the title of the book is probably derived from Darwin's own description of the Galapagos' volcanic hills and craters "From their regular form, they gave the country a workshop appearance".

If you have never read an account that made sense of Darwin's discovery of evolution as the only plausible explanation of what he found at the Galapagos islands, this is your book. The basic outlook with which he contended was Biblical literalism in a place we do not expect to find it. After all, did Sir Francis Bacon not establish the criterion of empiricism in science? In one crucial area, that of correctly naming all of nature's beings, he expected man to be able to name them all correctly, even as it had been in the Garden of Eden. Surprisingly, in England, the 18th and much of the 19th century continued his bias, which arises from a familiar blind spot for much of the English-speaking world, the Puritan Revolution.

According to Bacon, man would also recover his Eden-based knowledge of the use of every plant and animal, could he but name them all. Since the Galapagos have no obviously useful animals, such as any quadruped mammals, the islands were considered not only worthless but almost evil. It took some intervening factors, such as whaling in the area, to open it up.

Probably, as Larson suggests, the thinking that went into his theoretical structure for "Origin of Species" overwhelmed any more detailed derivation of his theory from his Galapagos data, an accident of history that has always added difficulty. Larson's ability to cover the gaps is the best I've seen. He also accepts the influence of Malthus on Darwin's formulation of the "how" of evolution in his theory's early development.

The subtitle is slightly misleading: God and Science on the Galapogos. The subtitle was probably created to cater to the interest in religion vs. science but that topic was explored very little. It was more just the history of the Galapagos. If you're really interested in the history of that archipelago, then this book is exactly what you want. But for me, I really don't care about every person that ever went to visit that island.

There are a few things I did take from the book. Currently, scientists are trying desperately to save the Galapagos' from humanity and preserve its uniqueness. The irony of it, is that the ecology-loving scientists are the ones that once encouraged the tourism of the islands that have lead to supposed ecological disaster there. They had some vision of a utopia where people would learn how precious the earth is and work to conserve it, but instead Ecuadorians have siezed the island for economic pipedreams, the residents not caring to preserve every species there to their expense.

I found not only interesting the book but also very well organize and clearly written.

Edward J. Larson's superbly presented Evolution's Workshop considers the Galapagos Islands, its history, and the nature of pre-evolutionary science on the islands. The history of top researchers' studies on the islands and their contribution to major scientific advancements makes for a specific type of history which goes beyond the usual examination of Darwinian theory alone.

The history of a science can teach you much about the process of science and scientific thinking. Evolution marks the beginning of modern biological thought, and the Galapagos Islands played a major role in the development of evolutionary ideas. Edward Larson shows us how the archipelago was differently perceived by so many people from Melville and Darwin in the mid-1800s to later visitors up until the present day. While it would probably be confusing to learn about evolutionary theories from this book, Larson brings to light how some of those theories developed with respect to findings from the Galapagos. By doing this, one shares in the same act of discovery that has so enchanted the various researchers who have come to the islands. All the while, it is a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it those interested in a fascinating narrative about the history of evolution.

If you're looking for a book about the voyage of the Beagle and the development of Darwin's theories, this book is likely to disappoint. Written in an academic tone and with no sense of narrative, it's hard to believe the author won a Pulitzer Prize (different book). However, if you want to learn about buccaneers and the Galapagos Islands you will find more of the following: "At the time, buccaneers held a shifting status somewhere between adventurers and thieves."