Volume 27, Number 1 · February 7, 1980
Evolution Toward What?
By J.Z. Young
The Beagle Record: Selections from the Original Pictorial Records and Written Accounts of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle
edited by Richard Darwin Keynes
Cambridge University Press, 409 pp., $75.00
Darwin and the Beagle
by Alan Moorehead
Penguin Books, 224 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation
by Neal C. Gillespie
University of Chicago Press, 202 pp., $16.50
The Darwinian Revolution
by Michael Ruse
University of Chicago Press, 320 pp., $20.00
Somatic Selection and Adaptive Evolution
by E. J. Steele
Williams and Wallace International (Toronto), 91 pp., $14.95
Patterns of Evolution
edited by Arthur Hallam
Elsevier, 592 pp., $83.00
It is interesting that the scientific discovery that has had the greatest influence on human thought has no practical use whatever. Darwin's demonstration that there was a time when no men existed and that we are directly descended from animals provided a whole set of new problems about the nature and limitations of religion, philosophy, and science. Yet the history of the origins of the new science of biology is still not fully understood. Did it grow out of the earlier sciences? Are we sure even today that it is an exact science, conforming to the same principles as the others? The progress of astronomy, physics, and chemistry has been charted through the centuries. But biology is a subject so recent and yet so extensive that we find it hard to see when it started or indeed where it begins and ends today. All thinking depends on the brain, so can there be boundaries between philosophy and biology? Conversely all living things consist of molecules, so does the study of life derive its fundamental principles from those of physics and chemistry? Some biologists enthusiastically say 'Yes,' while others revile them as 'reductionists.' Such thoughts lead us to basic metaphysical problems about whether there are fundamental laws of the universe and if so how much can human beings know about them.
Review, 3532 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |