Volume 30, Number 10 · June 16, 1983
Darwin's Revolution
By Richard C. Lewontin
Darwin for Beginners
by Jonathan Miller, by Borin Van Loon
Pantheon, 176 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin
edited by John Maynard Smith
W.H. Freeman, 239 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Evolution Without Evidence: Charles Darwin and "The Origin of Species"
by Barry G. Gale
University of New Mexico Press, 238 pp., $21.95
The Monkey Puzzle: Reshaping the Evolutionary Tree
by John Gribbin, by Jeremy Cherfas
Pantheon, 280 pp., $13.95
The Myths of Human Evolution
by Niles Eldredge, by Ian Tattersall
Columbia University Press, 197 pp., $16.95
Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution
by Douglas J. Futuyma
Pantheon, 251 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism
by Philip Kitcher, with Patricia Kitcher
MIT Press, 213 pp., $15.00
Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies
by Michael Ruse, foreword by Ernst Mayr
Addison-Wesley, 356 pp., $12.50 (paper)
Scientists are infatuated with the idea of revolution. Even before the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,[1] and with ever increasing frequency after it, would-be Lenins of the laboratory have daydreamed about overthrowing the state of their science and establishing a new intellectual order. After all, who, in a social community that places so high a value on originality, wants to be thought of as a mere epigone, carrying out 'normal science' in pursuit of a conventional 'paradigm'? Those very terms, introduced by Kuhn, reek of dullness and conventionality. Better, as J.B.S. Haldane used to say, to produce something that is 'interesting, even if not true.' As a characterized, new discoveries are characterized as 'revolutions' even when they only confirm and extend the power of ideas that already rule.
Review, 6266 words
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