A Reading Course in Evolution

Abstract

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Introduction

Evolution is not a difficult topic to learn insofar as none of the theory is so conceptually unfamiliar to the thinking layperson as to require individual tuition. Evolution can be learned from books.

However, there is a good deal of misinformation about too; more than enough to confuse the aspiring student. Some of it is deliberately put about by those seeking to discredit the evolutionary sciences - creationists and the like - but much is just the natural repetition of misunderstandings, partial understandings, or simply old ideas which have since proved unsound.

Some of the problems stem from within our own ranks: a few evolutionary writers, though far from being creationists or even poorly grounded in the subject, nevertheless are idealogically motivated (to a fault) and their writings are viewed with considerable mistrust by the evolutionary mainstream. Stephen Jay Gould is probably the paramount example of this phenomenon. And even the best of the mainstream authors, Richard Fortey for example, though guided more by the evidence than by ideology, may still be guilty of the occasional faux pas.

So it is important to know which books to read, and, if possible, to have a guide.

The topic can be approached from many directions: obviously geology provides us with the fossil record - both a means to calibrate our historical framework and an independent test of our theories - whereas biology promises to explain how evolution might work. Which is best? I believe both are essential. A unidisciplinary, fossils-only approach makes about as much sense as a one-sided coin. Similarly, any biologist who believes that genes alone hold the key to the past, has never seen a dinosaur, let alone any of the more exotic inhabitants of the past.

The Fossil Record

References

Arthur, Wallace 1997: The Origins of Animal Bodyplans. Cambridge University Press, London.

MacLeod, Norman (2002, in press): Extinction. In Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. Nature Publishing Group, Macmillan.