Description
Cranmore Publications The Mechanisms of Evolution A Critique of the Neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis by Steven Hawkins
Do we understand how evolution works? In this book Steven Hawkins outlines various possible mechanisms of biological evolution - the Neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis, Symbiogenesis and Developmental Systems Theory. He contrasts and compares these various theories and proposes a view of evolution in which all three mechanisms have a role to play. In this schema \'natural selection\' only has a minor role to play in biological evolution. In the final chapter Hawkins considers non-biological evolution and is drawn to conclude that we are unable to understand the fundamental nature of both non-biological evolution and biological evolution. \"the interpretations surrounding the brute fact of evolution remain contentious, controversial, fractious, and acrimonious.\" Simon Conway Morris \"if selection could be somehow dispensed with, so that all variants survived and multiplied, the higher forms would nevertheless have arisen.\" H. J. Muller \"most evolutionary novelty arose and still arises directly from symbiosis.\" Lynn Margulis \"The universe, non-biological evolution and biological evolution are all fundamentally mysterious to us, and will remain so in the future.\" Steven Hawkins In this timely work Steven Hawkins considers our current state of knowledge of the mechanisms which underpin the evolutionary process. If you currently believe that you have a good understanding of how evolution works then there is a good chance that this book will change your beliefs. After reviewing the current dominant views of how evolution works, Hawkins outlines his own favoured view according to which natural selection is not the main mechanism of speciation. However, Hawkins finally concludes that the view of evolution that one has is a sign not of how evolution actually works, but of how one conceives of oneself and of how one conceives of the universe around one.