I recommend this book as background reading for my evolutionary psychology students, since so many of them--like most people, even the well educated--have no idea of what is really going on in research on evolution. I don't think students--or anyone else--should be talking about evolutionary psychology unless they understand the state-of-the-art in the sciences of evolution.
Outside of science, people seem to think the "big question" is whether evolution is a fact. The cognoscenti pride themselves on knowing that it is, looking down upon religious fideists of various sorts who claim otherwise. And vice versa.
Within science, though, that question does not even appear. That evolution is a set of facts to be explained, not a hypothesis up for grabs, was settled within science a century ago.
For real scientists, the real debates--the real efforts to understand reality--take place over very different questions, and the various research programs differ very significantly. This book is a nice overview of some of the leading issues.
If you are under the illusion that the debate is about whether evolution takes place, you will find this book kind of ho-hum. But thinking that makes about as much sense as being ho-hum about Newton vs. Einstein. That would be like thinking, "Newton and Einstein didn't disagree on whether gravity exists, so this is just infighting among people who differ only in emphasis."
In fact, Newton v. Einstein matters a great deal--as do the controversies explained in this book. Just as Einstein's discoveries made possible many developments we would never even have been able to conceive within Newtonian physics, so the eventual truths uncovered by the various competing research programs in evolution will determine a great deal about our ability to understand and shape our lives.
Scientists, of course, are human, and they can want for themselves all sorts of things besides scientific truth, including fame, influence, and the financial rewards of being popular celebrities. (Science journals do not pay for articles. Pop venues do. Science books rarely make much money. Lots of pop writing on science does.) Sadly, too many of the scientists, when they turn to writing for popular audiences, grossly misrepresent science, and they sometimes just get mean. Within the popular press--even the highly respectable sanctums of the intelligentsia, like The New York Review of Books--writers need not meet elementary rules of scientific writing. Routinely, they don't. They exaggerate their own claims, minimize the evidence for the claims of others, and claim to have proven grand things that every real scientist in the world knows they haven't--and that they don't even claim themselves in their scientific writing! And they do not necessarily play fair with their opponents. In the evolution debates, they have basically reduced themselves to insulting each others mothers.
Richard Morris does a nice job of avoiding such scientifically useless vituperation, helping us see where the real issues lie and what makes each possibility promising.
Of course, anyone who wants can complain about Morris's principles of selection. Personally, I wish he had not overlooked increased scientific interest in sexual selection, especially since there is evidence to show that the leading way of reconciling it with natural selection is less than clearly true. But that's really neither here nor thre. The important thing is that he has made clear what real research within science is about.
If you are a lay person who wants a fair overview of current issues involved in our efforts to understand human life, this is a very helpful accomplishment.
If, though, you have no interest in understanding how life works, just an interest in priding yourself on already accepting evolution, you will find this book boring.
Evolutionary thinking promises to open exhilirating new vistas on our lives. The new areas of research it has opened even in the last twenty years--which are certainly decades away from yielding conclusive results--give us the chance to understand ourselves and our world as never before. For those sciences to do their work, though, they need for all of us to understand why they matter, what they may accomplkish, and what they haven't yet achieved. They need that so we support them and make their work possible.
That being said, it follows that Morris has made a contribution to the future of our species--insofar as this book helps people see beyond the cant and mutual ill-will that fills public debate, to understand that evolution is a set of sciences, not a settled body of knowledge, from which we can eventually learn immense amounts.
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