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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting and Iconoclastic!, November 28, 2004
This review is from: The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human (Paperback)
What made humans human? Why study science at all? Is evolutionary psychology science or informed speculation? Who were the Neanderthals? If these look like lofty questions, that is because they are. But author Ian Tattersall does his best to speculate answers (or at very least, discourse on why one can't be had.)
Tattersal is somewhat iconoclastic. For instance, he tries to dispell the 'myth' that evolution is a gradual process of small tinkerings and explicates the view (first made by SJ Gould) that evolution consists of much stasis punctuated by radical changes. He also rails against the 'ultra-adaptationism' prevalent in things like evolutionary psychology - the view that all (or at least, most) traits should be explained as ones 'selected for' due to their adaptationary benefit. Nonsense, Tattersall retorts. As evolution doesn't work on the reductionistic 'trait' - but rather than holistic individual - level, many of our traits could more easily (and plausibly) be explained as ones that were part of individuals who made it due to OTHER traits - exaptations that simply 'came along for the ride,' only to be utilized later.
The reason I bring all this up is that these ideas are integral to Tattersall's essays (almost to the point of repitition). From his conjecture that the 'human' brain wasn't a gradual process, but appeared somewhat rapidly (with many of its functions coming to use only later), to his discomfort with evolutionary psychology (no, he does not say that traits have no genetic basis, as one reviewer caricatured. Rather, he suggests that evolutionary psych is oversimplistic and quite untestable), these essays draw on the iconoclastic ideas outlayed in the preceeding paragraph.
There is one big con and one big pro to this book. The con is that Tattersal is quite repititious in that he brings the same two ideas back as the prime mover of every essay. The pro is that his view of what science is, is profoundly honest. From the first essay (on why science is so important and successful) to the last, he sees science as something that should never be afraid to admit that it doesn't quite know yet, a process that is ongoing in the collection of information and the testing of theses, and something that, to qualify as science, MUST be testable somehow (which is why evolutioanry psych gets Tattersall's criticism).
All in all, a good book.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
interesting and not a good buy either, March 4, 2002
The main advantage of this book is the fact that it is a collection of essays, which increases the readability and allows one to finish the book real quick. Further, the essays also quickly summarize some of the more common evolutionary theories of Gould and others before him, so as to act as a good 'summarizer'. It also elaborates the concept of exaptation, which seems to be a powerful thought, rich in potential. The reason for the three stars is that the writer's bias against the 'science of evolutionary psychology' comes out pretty often, and thus makes the open minded reader familiar with the subject feel as if the writer is a little close minded on this. Further, not too many original ideas here, mostly a synthesis of work done already by others - worth the synthesis though Dont expect too much from this book, but a neat little concise summary with perhaps a maximum of few new ideas coming from it
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent start, March 25, 2002
The Monkey in the Mirror is a collection of short essays on science and in particular on evolutionary science. Tattersall's discussion is clear and concise, and while I'm not entirely in accordance with all of his statements with regard to evolution, I feel that the work has much to say for itself. The very word "evolution" seems to bring a knee jerk response from many people, an almost "them or us" mentality of the besieged, and their oft made point that evolution is just an unproven "theory" and not law, makes the need for public education apparent. With recent attempts in several states to prevent educators from properly teaching these subjects or the insistence that philosophical or religious concepts be taught as equally valid explanations of natural phenomena, there is without doubt an urgent need to deliver a clearer message of what science is and is not. As Tattersall writes in his first chapter "In science it is no crime to be wrong, unless you are (inappropriately) laying claim to truth. What matters is that science as a whole is a self-correcting mechanism in which both new and old notions are constantly under scrutiny. In other words, the edifice of scientific knowledge consists simply of a body of observations and ideas that have (so far) proven resistant to attack, and that are thus accepted as working hypotheses about nature (p. 9)." Nor can one delete the study of evolution from the scientific curriculum and profitably substitute religious explanations. As the author points out, "The notion of evolution predicts the nested pattern of relationships we find in the living world; supernatural creation, on the other hand, predicts nothing. It is concepts of this latter kind that are truly untestable (p. 15)." Only when the public is better educated on the subject of science can school boards and education committees more properly design programs to meet the needs of young people. Least the intellectual mistakenly think that science in the schools is only important to those who have decided to dedicate themselves to scientific careers, one might point out that it is the average voter who decides the fate of wetlands, nuclear waste sites, conservation of ocean resources, etc. and who needs at least a basic understanding of how life as we know it came to be and how our decisions can change that life drastically. The average farmer needs to know what the impact of his decisions with respect to land use, plant and animal pest control, cultivation of natural, bioengineered or hybridize plants, etc have on the environment and on his own continued prosperity. The home owner who over fertilizes his lawn or who indiscreetly disposes of toxic substances in his garbage bin also needs to understand the problems these decisions can cause for the community in which he lives. Any fear that such a person might feel over learning the concepts of science and of evolution might be alleviated by one of the more important statements in the book, "Scientific findings do not threaten anyone (except to the extent that Homo sapiens may prove incapable of controlling what science makes possible). But what is critical to understand is that our species (or, for that matter, God) is not in the least diminished by the idea that we emerged thanks to the processes of evolution (p. 55)." Tattersall's book gives a nice overview of how life got to be as we know it and provides the reader with at least a small toolkit of information for thinking about the subjects of science, biological evolution, and mankind's part in the big picture.
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