eBook - PDF

Not by Design

Name: Not by Design
Author: John Reiss

Retiring Darwin’s Watchmaker

John Reiss,

440 pages
English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

Not by Design

Retiring Darwin’s Watchmaker

John Reiss,

About this book

More than two centuries ago, William Paley introduced his famous metaphor of the universe as a watch made by the Creator. For Paley, the exquisite structure of the universe necessitated a designer. Today, some 150 years since Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, the argument of design is seeing a revival. This provocative work tells how Darwin left the door open for this revival--and at the same time argues for a new conceptual framework that avoids the problematic teleology inherent in Darwin's formulation of natural selection. In a wide-ranging discussion of the historical and philosophical dimensions of evolutionary theory from the ancient Greeks to today, John Reiss argues that we should look to the principle of the conditions for existence, first formulated before On the Origin of Species by the French paleontologist Georges Cuvier, to clarify the relation of adaptation to evolution. Reiss suggests that Cuvier's principle can help resolve persistent issues in evolutionary biology, including the proper definition of natural selection, the distinction between natural selection and genetic drift, and the meaning of genetic load. Moreover, he shows how this principle can help unite diverse areas of biology, ranging from quantitative genetics and the theory of the levels of selection to evo-devo, ecology, physiology, and conservation biology.

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Yes, you can access Not by Design by John Reiss in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Evolution. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.