CBS >> CBS staff >> Dave's Home Page >> What is Dave Reading Now?

Some Books that I have read recently

Created June, 1997; last updated: 3 December, 2003

Presently (December, 2003), I'm reading:

"The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange & Inventive Life of Robert Hooke, 1635-1703" , by Stephen Inwood, (MacMillan Pub. Ltd., London, 2002).

November, 2003
"The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer" , by Doron Swade, (Viking Press, New York, 2001).

October, 2003
"MICROBE HUNTERS" , by Paul de Kruif, (A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace and Company, San Diego, 1926).

September, 2003
"HELICOBACTER PIONEERS: Firsthand accounts from the scientists who discovered helicobacters 1892-1982" , edited by Barry Marshall, (Blackwell Science Asia Pty Ltd., Oxford, 2002).

August, 2003
"Bioinformatics for Dummies" , by Jean-Michel Claverie and Cedric Notredame, (Wiley Publishing Company, New York, 2003).

July, 2003
"DARWIN AND DESIGN - Does Evolution Have a Purpose?" , by Micheael Ruse, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2003).

June, 2003
"genes, girls, and gamow" , by James D. Watson, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000).

May, 2003
"THE DATING GAME - One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth" , by Cherry Lewis, (Plume, New York, 2002). This is a fun (or maybe sad) look at some of the silly things people do.

April, 2003
"I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity" , by Max F. Perutz, (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York, 2002).
"The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action" , by Wendy Nothcutt, (Plume, New York, 2002). This is a fun (or maybe sad) look at some of the silly things people do.

March, 2003
"Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives" , by Robert T. Pennock, (MIT Press, New York, 2001). This is a wonderful book, although it was quite thick (more than 800 pages!) - I feel that this collection of essays is a quite good look at the "Intelligent Design" arguments, with essays written by the proponents of the theories (Phil Johnson, Bill Dembskii, Mike Behe, etc.) as well as some thoughtful replies by scientists who question their conclusions.

February, 2003
""WHAT EVOLUTION IS , by Ernst Mayr, (Phoenix Paperback, London, 2002). This is a really great book for an overview of evolutionary theory, written by one of the "founding fathers" of evolutionary theory.

January, 2003
"A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE" , by Stephen Wolfram, (Wolfram Media, Incorporated, Champaign, Illinois, USA, 2002).
"The BATTLE FOR GOD - Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam" , by Karen Armstrong, (HarperCollins Publishers, London, 2001). This is a very thoughtful, historical analysis of the rise of Fundamentalism. I learned a lot from reading this book, and appreciated the historical and sociological context. The fundamentalists are all reacting to threats (both percieved and real) to their way of life. I like Armstrongs' approach that we NEED both the mythos and logos, but yet modern "secular" society seems to only have the logos, and that there is a real need for the mythos in most people in today's world.

December, 2002
"DENYING EVOLUTION - Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science" , by Massimo Pigliucci, (Sinauer Associates, Publishers, Sunderland, Tennessee, USA, 2002).This was a good book. Pigliucci takes on the larger question of WHY it is that so many people in America believe in Creationism. He says that in actuality this is a CULTURAL WAR, not a scientific one. I agree.
"SECRET AGENTS - The Menace of Emerging Infections" , by Madeline Drexler, (Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002). This book seemed to me like an updated version of "The Coming Plague" (see below). I thought it was quite well-written and very interesting.
"PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE - A Very Short Introduction" , by Samir Okasha, (Oxford University Pres, Oxford, UK, 2002). This little book is a good overview of the philosophy of science.
"THE COMING PLAGUE - Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance" , by Laurie Garrett, (Penguin Books USA, New York, 1995). This book was good reading over Christmas (more than 700 pages!). Garrett does a thorough job of showing the relationship between society and emerging diseases, and how that in many cases epidemics could have been avoided if we had reacted properly. Furthermore, I find it a bit disturbing that despite the clear link to lack of health care and epidemics which can affect everyone in society, the problem of adequate health care for the general population within the U.S. still has not been addressed.
"THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE - The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry" , by Bryan Sykes, (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2001).

November, 2002
"IN THE WAKE OF THE PLAGUE - The Black Death and the World That Made It" , by Norman F. Cantor, (Perennial - An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2001). This book reads like a B-rated movie. I guess maybe I have been spoiled by having recently read many good "popular science" books, such as the "SCIENCE - A HISTORY" by John Gribbon (see below), or many of the other "Germs" books (e.g., "GERMS" by Miller, Engleberg and Brog, "BIOHAZARD" by Ken Alibek, or "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett). The plot of the book is supposed to be about the "Black Death" in 1348. However, there are many digressions (too many, in my opinion) about other historical events in the same geographical area, but happening several hundred years later. Also, I felt like some of the choice of words seemed a bit odd. For example, there are frequent references to the "Biomedical event" or that the "Biomedical facilities" of the 14th century weren't equipped to deal with the plague. Cantor argues that the plague might also have involved Bacillus anthracis, in addition to the more famous bacterial villian of Yersinia pestis, although this idea could have been developed and explained more fully. (Again I must confess that I feel a bit spoilt having read Richard Preston's account [see comments on his book, "Demon in the Freezer" below] of what happens to a person when they die of B. anthracis bacterial infection.)
"SCIENCE - A History. 1543 - 2001" , by John Gribbon, (The Penguin Press, London, 2002). This thick tome (more than 600 pages!) is an excellent book. Gribbon does a good job of outlining a hisotry of Western Science. I was familiar with most of the stories, but learned something new about Ice Ages. Also, I was amazed to learn that the speed of light had been measured in 1679 (by the Dane Ole Rømer), and the value was fairly accurate (cp. his value of 298,000 km/sec vs. the modern value of 299,792 km/sec).
Gribbon states that he thinks that there's no such thing as a "Revolution" in science (kind of like Shapin's "The SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION" book - where he starts off by saying "There is no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it."). For example, in a footnote on page 462, Gribbon says "we hope we have made clear the way in which the ideas evolved, with new models patiently building on new data in the usual way that science progresses. The idea of scientific revolutions is essentially a myth beloved by sociologists who have never worked at the scientific coal face". However, a bit later (page 484) he says that perhaps quantum mechanics is the single exception in that this could qualify truly as a revolution. Finally, towards the end of the book Gribbon says of Einstein's general theory of relativity that "the time was clearly ripe for the general theory and his [Einstein's] contribution, although inspired, is not the isolated act of genius it is often portrayed." (page 594).
OF COURSE it is impossible to cover EVERYTHING in such a book, but I felt a bit dissappointed in the section on DNA, where he basically stops at the 1950's - and leaves out the massive "revolution" (pardon the pun) that has happened in molecular biology. He could have included something like the timeline for sequencing that I use for my lectures in Introductory Bioinformatics - in 1979, it would take several MILLION years to sequence the human genome; in 1989, it would take about 5000 years to sequence the human genome, and by 1999, it would take a mere 50 years to finish the genome, and the human genome was "sequenced" in 2001. But now we have sooo much data that it's quite difficult to deal with. However, this is a minor omission [and in all fairness, John Gribbon does a good job of covering quite a bit of this material in his book "In Search of the Double Helix", published a few years ago...], and overall I still think it's one of the best books I've read on the subject. This book is filled with lots of trivial but fascinating details about the history of science. I would gladly recommend it to people interested in learning more about science.

October, 2002
"Genes and Signals" , by Mark Ptashne and Alexander Gann, (Cold Spring Harbor Press, New York, 2002). This book is a good introduction to gene regulation, in terms of an overview of general mechanisms. In particular, the idea of recruitment of proteins to the right location at the right time seems to be a theme that occurs frequently in biological control systems.
     "An organism is a complex assembly of different kinds of cells that perform many different functions. A major goal of biological research is to understand how that complexity is generated...it is possible to discover beneath all the extraordinary complexity of gene expression a process of rather simple molecular interactions that regulate transcription in these systems." from the Foreward

     "That so much of the specificity of regulation - and hence so much of development and evolutionary change - depends on simple binding interactions is (or we think should be) hard to swallow. It certainly is for us. We, and we suspect many others, had expected that the meanings of biological signals would have been, somehow, more solidly based. As we have explained in the earlier part of this chapter, the rather crudely based systems are poised to go awry, and many of the complexities we see seem to be add-ons to get these systems to work.
     "It is understandable that we describe individual cases as 'beautiful' and 'elegant' (cf. the lambda switch). But unlike Creationists (who revel in such descriptions), we realise that these systems evolved, stepwise. And so it should hardly be surprising that underlying all the complexities are certain rather simple mechanisms that, by being reiterated and constantly added to, can produce living systems. page 176.
"The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story" , by Richard Preston, (Cold Spring Harbor Press, New York, 2002). On the back cover of the book is a quote from Stephen King, who says this is one of the most frightening books he's read. I agree. There are two stories told by Preston in this book - one is about anthrax, and the letters sent containing "weapons grade" spores. The other story is about smallpox - this is the "demon in the freezer". This is a very frightening aspect of "bioterrorism".

September, 2002
"LONGITUDES and ATTITUDES: Exploring the World After September 11" , by Thomas Friedman, (Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 2002). I love reading Friedman's columns in the New York Times, and have enjoyed reading his two other books. His views are obviously just that - his own opinion on the middle east and problems within arab countries. But I think that it is obvious that Friedman has done a lot of thinking about talking with people and government leaders who should be in a position to know what's going on in their countries. I agree that a lot of the problem comes from the religious intolerance tought by the Muslim schools, with the tacit approval from the governments who would rather the kids turn their frustration away from the problems of their government, and towards the "infidels".
"EVOLUTION'S WORKSHOP - God and Science on the Galapagos Islands" , by Edward J. Larsen, (Basic Books, New York, 2001). Larsen does an excellent job of giving a history of evolutionary science done in the Galapogos. This is kind of a chronology of the Galapagos Islands, from their discovery about 500 years ago to the present day. I was surprised at the end of the book to learn about the problems of crowding and overpopulation of some of the cities on the islands.

August, 2002
"The Logic of Scientific Discovery" , by Karl Popper, (Routledge Classics, New York, 2002). This was first published as Logik der Forschung in 1935. The first English edition was published in 1959, and it was last revised by the author in 1967. This is a great book - both in terms of history of science, and also in terms of some of the ideas that are discussed. Popper is most famous (in my opinion) for his notion that a scientific theory must be "Falsifiable" (chapter 4 is on "Falsifiability", but this theme is discussed throughout the book.
"MAKING SENSE OF LIFE - Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines" , Evelyn Fox Keller, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massacusetts, USA, 2002). This is a philosophical book about biology. Keller is coming from a "biophysics" perspective, and admitedly seemed surprised at the difference in perspective of physicists vs. biologists in what they consider "evidence" in science. The book is about developmental biology, but from a very different point of view - one of the points of the book is a discussion of what does it actually MEAN to "explain" biological development. It turns out that biologists and physicists have different definitions of an "explanation".

My project departs from virtualy all of the existing philosophical literature on scientific explanation in several important ways. In contrast to the view most familiar to philosophers of science - namely, that explanatory adequacy (and/or explanatory power) is self-evident in science - I approach the question of the meaning of explanation by asking: What counts as an explanation in actual scientific practice? In sympathy with Stephen Weinberg's recommendation to philosophers of physics, I want to ground my discussion of explanation in biology in that which leads biologists to say "Aha!". Posing the question in this way, however, one quickly finds a bewildering set of answers. And for me, this very variability commands historical and philosophical interest.... (pages 4-5).

July, 2002
"The Century of the Gene" , Evelyn Fox Keller, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massacusetts, USA, 2000).
"THE TRIPLE HELIX: Gene, Organism, and Environment" , Richard C. Lewontin, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massacusetts, USA, reprint edition, 2001). I used a quote from the book for a talk on the "Bioinformatics of Helicobacter pylori". At the beginning of my talk, I had a quote from Walter Gilbert from the 1960s - "Given the complete DNA sequence of an organism, and a large enough computer, it is possible to 'compute' the organism." At the end of my talk, the last slide before the acknowledgements had the following quote from this book:

" If we had the complete DNA sequence of an organism, and unlimited computing power, we could not compute the organism, because the organism does not compute itself from its genes. Any computer that did as poor a job of computation as an organism from its 'genetic programme' would be immediately thrown into the trash and its manufacturer would be sued by the purchaser." (page 17).
Link to lecture notes for the talk

June, 2002
"I HAVE LANDED - The End of a Beginning in Natural History" , Stephen Jay Gould, (Harmony Books, New York, 2002).
"Transducing The Genome: Information, Anarchy, and Revolution in the Biomedical Sciences" , Gary Zweiger, (McGraw Hill Books, New York, 2001).
"Galileo's Daughter" , Dava Sobel, (Penguin Books, New York, 2000).

May, 2002
"The SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION" , by Steven Shapin, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 1998). "There is no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.", starts the Introduction.
"THE SPARK OF LIFE - Darwin and the Primeval Soup" , Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2000).

April, 2002
"Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution" , Randal Keynes, (Riverhead Books, New York, 2002).
"CRADLE OF LIFE - The Discovery of Earth's Earlierst Fossils" , J.William Schopf, (Princeton University Press, Oxfordshire, UK, 1999).

March, 2002
"Hidden Histories of Science" , Robert B. Silvers, Editor, (Granta Books, London, 1997). This is a selection of five essays for the "New York Review of Books", written by Jonathan Miller, Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Kelves, Richard Lewontin, and Oliver Sacks.
"COMPLEXIFICATION - Explaining a Paradoxical World Through the Science of Surprise" , by John L. Casti, (Abacus, A Division of Little, Brown and Company, London, UK, 1995).

February, 2002
"GERMS - Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" , by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001).
"Signs of Intelligence - Understanding Intelligent Design" , edited by William A. Dembski and James M. Kushiner, (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 2001).
Link to a review of this book.
"TRILOBITE! Eyewitness to Evolution" , by Richard Fortey, (Flamingo, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, London, 2001).

January, 2002
"THE UNDERGROWTH OF SCIENCE - Delusion, Self-deception, and Human Fraility" , by Walter Gratzer, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2000).
"The Hunt for Life on Mars" , by Donald Goldsmith, (A Plume Book, Published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, NY, 1998).
"THE ARGUMENT CULTURE - changing the way we argue" , by Deborah Tannen, (Virago, A Division of Little, Brown and Company (UK), London, England, 1999).
"THE SELF-MADE TAPESTRY - Pattern formation in nature" , by Philip Ball, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1999).

December, 2001
"THE BEST American Science Writing 2001" , Timothy Ferris, editor, (ECCO, An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2001).
"Turing and the Universal Machine - The Making of the Modern Computer" , by Jon Agar, (ICON Books, Ltd., Cambridge, UK, 2001).
"BIOHAZARD" , by Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, (Arrow Books, The Random House Group Limited, 1999).
"LUCIFER'S Legacy: The meaning of assymetry in nature" , by Frank Close, (Arrow Books, The Random House Group Limited, 1999).

November, 2001
"The Lying Stones of Methusella" , by Stephen Jay Gould, (Arrow Books, The Random House Group Limited, 1999).
"The Ontogeny of Biological Information - Developmental Systems and Evolution" , by Susan Oyama, (2nd edition, Duke University Press, 2000).

October, 2001
"LONGITUDE - The True Story of a Lone Genus who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" , by Dava Sobel, (Penguin Books, New York, 1996). I bought this book at the National Maritime Museum, in London. This is a very good history of the development of modern, accurate portable clocks. There are many things I'd never thought about before, such as how important knowing the time correctly is, if one is travelling at sea. Until very recently, this was the means of calculating where you were with respect to a map.
"The Biography of a Germ" , by Arno Karlen, (Phoenix Books, London, 2000). This is an excellent book about the bacteria Borrellia Burgdorferi, which is the cause of Lyme disease - which results from tick bites.

September, 2001
"LIFE - An Unauthorised Biography" , by Richard Fortey, (Flamigo Paperback, London, 1998). This is a great book, written by someone who should know about the subject: Fortey is a senior palentologist at the Natural History Museum, London. I thought the book did a good job of getting across the idea of the vastness of evolutionary time through which we have fossil evidence of life. There were several exhibist at the Natural History museum mentioned in the book that I must check out, the next time I am in London.

August, 2001
"The Art of GENES - How Organisms Make Themselves" , by Enrico Coen, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1999). This is an excellent book about developmental biology, written by a plant molecular biologist. It's a bit thick (382 pages!) but well worth the read. As the title suggests, the main argument throughout is a comparison of development with art. But with organisms this is a bit of a strange dilemma - the organisms develop from a single egg to an adult - how can a painting make a picture of itself?

"By the mid-twentieth century, biologists had therefore arrived at a position that might be called mechanistic epigenesis. Adults are not preformed within eggs as miniatures, they form gradually during the process of development. The fertilised egg, however, is not a blank sheet: it contains genes contributed by each parent, and these affect the characteristics of the final organism. The whole process has arisen as a consequence of natural selection acting over many millions of generations, rather than being the manifestation of a special vital force.
There is still, however, a major problem with this view: the mechanism by which the hereditary factors in the fertilised egg, the genes, lead to the formation of adult features is left entirely unresolved. It is as if you have been presented with a magic trick, like a rabbit being pulled out of a hat. You know that it does not involve any real magic - no supernatural forces are involved - but you can't see how it is done. We witness this trick every time a child is born or when a seed grows into a plant. It is all done with no hands. Darwin's theory of Natural Selection suggests that no real magic need be inovlved; it is not necessary to invoke a vital force. But the mechanism of development - the way the egg transforms itself into an adult - remains as obscure as ever. The nature of the problem can perhaps be illustrated by looking at some of the more recent metaphors that have been used to try and account for development." page 9.

July, 2001
"DEAR MR. DARWIN - Letters on the Evolution of Life and Human Nature" , by Gabriel Dover, (A Phoenix Paperback, an imprint of Orion Books, Ltd., London, 2000). The book is kind of an interesting idea - it is a set of letters between the author and Charles Darwin. Since there are so many volumes of correspondance from Darwin to his friends, there is enough for a good sampling of Darwin's writing style. Actually, as strange as it sounds, it works rather nicely, and it is a good way for the author to introduce some of the new concepts in evolution. A lot has happened in the past 150 years, and this is a fun way of discussing some of the new ideas - in particular he talks about the importance of molecular drive and molecular coevolution, in addition to natural selection. He is also quite critical of Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Gene".
"DAWKINS vs. GOULD - Survival of the Fittest" , by Kim Sterelny, (Icon Books Ltd., Cambridge, UK, 2001). This book was a good (quick) read - I finished it in one day. I bought this because a few years ago I gave an assignment to my students in an introductory biology class, to compare a book by Stephen Jay Gould ("Full House") to one by Richard Dawkins ("River out of Eden"). The two have different perspectives on evolution, and it is entertaining to watch the two go at each other (it can also be educational as well). The writer is a professor of philosophy in New Zealand, tries to keep a neutral stance between Gould, the American Harvard professor, and Dawkins,the British Oxford professor. However, towards the end of the book, Sterelny seems to hint at a bias towards Dawkins:
"....Dawkins and Gould mostly argue about issues internal to evolutionary theory. But they have different attitudes to science itself.
Dawkins is an old-fashioned science worshipper (Here I line up with him, not Gould). Like all scientists, he accepts the fundamental Popperian point that scientific theory is always provisional, always open to revision in the light of new evidence and new ideas.... the natuural sciences are our one great engine for producing objective knowledge about the world....
Gould's take on the status of science is much more ambigious. For one thing, he thinks some important questions are outside of science's scope. He defends this idea in his recent work on the relationship between science and religion. On this issue, Dawkin's views are simple. He is an atheist. Theisms of all varieties are just bad ideas about how the world works, and science can prove tha tthose ideas are bad. What is worse, as he sees it, these bad ideas have mostly had socially unfortunate consequences. Gould, by contrast, seems to think theism is irrelevant to religion. He interprets religion as a system of moral belief. Its essential feature is that it makes moral claims about how we out to live. In Gould's view, science is irrelevant to mral claims. Science and religion are concerned with independent domains...." pages 123-125.
Based on the above discussion, I would tend to side with Gould more than Dawkins - and not just because I am a theist. I think that there are questions science simply cannot answer. I am not a materialist - that is, I think that there can exist things around us which can be "real" even though we cannot see or feel them. I guess I could even go further and say that I think there is more than the physical world - which by definition is the limits of science. I certainly agree that science cannot prove that God exists (or does not exist) or miracles happen (or not). But just because these questions are outside the bounds of science do not mean that they are not important questions, nor that they should not be asked - all I'm saying is that in my opinion, when a person does science, (most of the time) it really doesn't matter whether they believe in God or Buddah or Rev. Moon or nothing at all. But such personal beliefs can affect people in their views towards life and other human beings. Surely there has been much good that has come about as the result of religious beliefs, despite what Dawkins claims. C.S. Lewis builds a good case for this in "The Abolition of Man", and presents a fictional account of what happens when this sense of morality is lost, in the last book of his science-fiction trilogy.

June, 2001
"The Creationists - The Evolution of Scientific Creationism", by Ronald L. Numbers, (University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles, California, 1993). This is a very good history of the "Young Earth" Creationist movement. I had not really appreciated that even during the early 1900's, most Christians were willing to accept scientific evidence that the earth was perhaps millions of years old. The idea that the world MUST BE less than 10,000 years old has only been held by a relatively small handful of people from around the turn of the century until the 1960's, when the Creationist movement started to spread in the U.S. It is interesting to read some of the comments about how the early creationists were alienated from society. Douglas Dewar had submitted a short paper to a mainstream scientific journal, about the distribution of mammalian fossils, which was rejected.
"... Dewar, nevertheless, interpreted the rejection as an attempt by those who had made evolution `a scientific creed' to muzzle independent-thinking creationists. Articulating what would soon become a creationist dogma, he argued that `Those who do not accept this creed are deemed unfit to hold scientific offices; their articles are rejected by newspapers or journals; their contributions are refused by scientific societies; and publishers decline to publish their books except at the author's expense'." (pages 149-150).
Dewar's complaints in 1923 sound very similar to the people from the Intelligent Design movement, who insist that their claim of creation by an Intelligent Designer Something, working outside of the laws of science, is a perfectly valid scientific notion, and can't seem to understand why SCIENCE or NATURE magazine wouldn't want to publish their arguments of incredulity (gee, this is soooo complicated GOD MUST have made it!) as if they were scientific.
"ARKANSAS MISCHIEF - The Birth of a National Scandal" , by Jim McDougal and Curtis Wilke, (Henry Hold and Company, Inc., New York, 1998). This book is an autobiography of Jim McDougal. I bought it at a book sale for 10 Danish crowns (very roughly one U.S. dollar). I was interested in it because I grew up in Arkansas, and I was curious about McDougal's story. I grew up in Springdale, and as a child I would often go on hiking or camping of fishing trips in the "Whitewater" area. However, most of the events in the Whitewater affair happened after I had left (in 1978). I had seen the headlines in the newspaper, but was not really sure what the scandal was about. I DO remember when governer Jim Guy Tucker resigned, not long after Clinton had been elected president. I think McDougal does a good job of describing his version of the events, although I am not entirely sure how accurate his story is. I enjoyed the book as a good distraction, though.

May, 2001
"Controlling Our Destinites : Historical, Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Perspectives on the Human Genome Project (Studies in Science & the human genome project)", edited by Phillip R. Sloan, (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2000). This hefty book (more than 500 pages!) is a collection of essays written by philosophers, theologians, and historians. For me this really helped put not only the "human genome project" into perspective, but also provided a wonderful insight into the relationship between theology and modern science.
"How We Believe : The Search for God in an Age of Science" , by Michael Shermer, (W.H. Freeman & Co., New York, 2000). I thought this book was a good presentation of a skeptics' view about why religion is so common in society. Shermer makes many good points, and early on I found myself agreeing with him. His analogy of another "spiritual" dimension to the appearance of a sphere in flatland is an old but good example, I think. My feeling is that we simply cannot say for certain that the world we see around us is all that exists - we now know of magnetic fields which have been around for a very long time, but only comparatively recently have been characterised by science. Might there not be similar phenomena that we have yet to discover?
I think that the idea of humans as "pattern seeking animals" explains a lot of our reading more meaning into some things than is really there. My only (minor) complaint is that the book already feels a bit dated in the discussion of the "end of the millenium". I guess from my perspective, the end of the millenium has come and gone with no great calamities - I had almost forgot all the hype from the media until I read the last section of the book.

April, 2001
"When Science Meets Religion" , by Ian G. Barber, (HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Pulblishers, New York, 2000). I liked this book. Barber lists four views of science and religion: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration. He then spends a chapter on each of five topics where science and religion interact - Astronomy and Creation; The Implications of Quantum Physics; Evolution and Continuing Creation; Genetics, Neuroscience and Human Nature; and God and Nature. For each of these he first summarises the present state of knowledge in the field, and then goes through the four different views and discusses various examples. He states up front that he would prefer views where science and religion can at least talk to each other ("Dialogue"), or better yet if they can actually be somehow integrated. I was at first surprised to see him place Phil Johnson and Mike Behe in the "conflict" category, along with of course Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. But I think he does a pretty good job of explaining that both groups are emphasizing conflicts between science and religion, rather than some sort of reconciliation between the two.
"Darwinism Comes to America" , by Ronald L. Numbers, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998). This is an interesting historical look at how Darwin's theory of evolution came to the United States. Numbers takes 80 American naturalists elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences between 1863 and 1900, and examines their written statements concerning Darwinism. After carefully examining their records in historical context, he then goes on to describe the development of the modern "creationists" movement. I was surprised to learn that the modern "young earth" creationist movement came from the 7th Adventists, who in the early part of the 1900s was one of the few groups who insisted that God must have created the world less than 10,000 years ago. Even William Jennings Bryan had no problem with God taking a long time (e.g., maybe even millions of years) to create life, and that it did not have to be within a literal 6 days, 24 hours each.
"SHAPING LIFE: Genes, Embryos, and Evolution" , by John Maynard Smith, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998). This is a good quick-read which is a summary of the role of genetics in development. It is part of the "Darwinism Today" series of short books about evolution. This is something that would be great for countering Jonathan Well's claim that genes have nothing to do with development of an organism.

March, 2001
"Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? : The Relationship Between Science and Religion" , by Michael Ruse, (Cambridge University Press, UK, 2001). Michael Ruse takes a long, careful look at whether believing in Darwinian evolution means that one can no longer be a Christian. He is being brutally honest when he says that the task is a difficult one, and that it is not easy to try and answer some of the questions, but he presses on, and goes through many of the traditional arguments for why believing in Darwinian evolution does not necessarily exclude belief in traditional Christianity. I loved the quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, where he says that we should worship the God we do know and have experienced, rather than limit God to the gaps of present scientific knowledge.
"Deciphering the DEAD SEA SCROLLS" , by Jonathan Campbell, (Fontanna Press, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Hammersmith, London, 1996). This is an overview of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I found it quite informative, and interesting in terms of comparison with the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Mishnah. I think Watson does a fair job of describing the historical context of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as give a careful look at some of the more bizarre claims about them.
"A PASSION FOR DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society" , by James D. Watson, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2000). This is a collection of writings from Watson, penned over the past 40 years. In one essay (written in 1978 amidst the "Recombinant DNA Controversy"), Watson writes:
"Compared to almost any other object that starts with the letter D, DNA is very safe indeed. Far better to worry about daggers, dynamite, dieldrin, dioxin, or drunken drivers than to draw up Rube Golberg schemes on how our laboratory-made DNA will lead to the extinction of the human race." (page 73)
I read this book while visiting Berlin - I was surprised to find one of the chapters entitled "5-days in Berlin", which was also the length of my stay there in the city as well. He had visited many of the same sites we went to, although of course he came as a celebrity ( and I came as a mere tourist). He gave the Germans a hard time about being hesitant to get involved in the Human Genome project, and genetic engineering in general. He made a big impact - more than 3 years after his visit, he was still being talked about. During my stay in Berlin, there was an article about the implications of biotechnology on the front page of a German newspaper. In it was the following quote: "...More and more German scientists have expressed their support for U.S. genetic research James Watson, who contends that society would only stand in its own way by attempting to hold up progress in biomedicine with religious - or indeed metaphysical arguments..." (Frankfurter Allgemeine, English edition, 24 March, 2001, page 1). The general tone of the article was that it would be better to stay away from pushing for new developments in human genetics. It ends with a rather philosophical tone :
"...Even a secularized society must make a decision regarding its image of mankind because there are consequences associated with that decision Are human beings pure matter, nothing more than the sum of their demonstrable chemical, biological and physiological processes? Or is their existence anchored rather in the spiritual realm, to which science has no access and in which it has no interest? those who prefer to leave that question to science have already made a decision."

February, 2001
"INTELLIGENT DESIGN - The Bridge Between Science & Theology" , by William A. Dembski, (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999). The "Bridge" in the title is meant to be a serious, scientific link between science in theology, restoring theology to its proper place as the "Queen of Sciences". Dembski has developed a statistical test to measure "Intelligent Design". To be honest, I was a bit afraid that a book written by a mathematician would be full of equations and difficult to understand. However, I found it quite easy to read. (After all, this book has an intended audience of the "general reader".) In the first chapter ("Recognizing the Divine Finger"), he talks quite a bit about the Bible and how people would ask God for signs, and what types of signs are valid. Essentially Dembski thinks he's found a way to PROVE that there MUST have been something outside of nature responsible for "specified complexity". Dembski advocates going back to the "pre-modern" view of the world.
Link to more comments on this book.
"THE THEORY OF OPTIONS - A New Theory of the Evolution of Human Behavior" , by Sean Gould, (Success Media, Bangkok, 2001). This book was sent to me by the author. Sean had contacted me by email, and asked me several questions about his book, and I agreed to read through drafts of various pieces, and make comments on them. Now I've read the whole book, and have a better understanding of the subject. Essentially, if I understand this right, the book is about the importance of adaptability in evolution. I think he made some interesting points, particularly about evolution of the human brain. If nothing else, this book perked my interest in the field, and perhaps I should read up some more on this, if I have the chance sometime.
"THE WEDGE OF TRUTH: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism" , by Phillip E. Johnson, (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2000). I have to admit that this book is better than I had thought it was going to be before I read it. I actually agree with many things that Phil Johnson has to say. I have no problem with his historical analysis of the decline in the influence of Christianity in higher education in the U.S., and I even agree with him on many of the things he has to say about morality. I think this book is a clear explanation of his "wedge strategy", and is a good overview for his plan to try and systematically split the ideas of "materialism" from science. However, as a working scientist who is NOT a materialist (that is, I believe that there's more to life than what we can physically see around us, and that science cannot explain everything), I resent his implication that scientists MUST assume a completely materialistic worldview if they are modern biologists (that is, if they accept the evidence of Darwinian evolution). I (very) strongly disagree with his idea that science can somehow "proove" the existence of God.

January, 2001
"CRACKING THE GENOME: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA" , by Kevin Davies, (The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster, INc., New York, 2001). I bought this book at the airport in San Francisco, when I was on my way to a conference on Microbial Genomes. This book is full of gossip about Craig Venter, Francis Collins, James Watson, and the race to sequence the human genome. (I was invited to speak at this conference by Clair Fraiser, Craig Venter's wife.) It was fun to read it and know a bit about some of the characters in the book. I read this book about two weeks before the two papers (in Science and Nature) were published on the human genome. From everything I've heard, the stories in the book are pretty much true. However, I did notice that some of his science wasn't presented very clearly. For example, on page 35, he shows the DNA sequence of a telomere - but it is written backward (3' to 5') - I think! I am not sure from the strange way the sequence is written. Then on the next page (page 36), he says that the first letter is a "G", which sounds as if he had indeed MEANT to write the sequence in the correct direction (5' to 3'). This is probably trivial to the nonspecialist, but to someone who reads DNA sequences, it makes a lot of difference - it is in fact two very different sequences. Also, I think he could have spent a bit more time fleshing out Celera's half-hearted sequencing (in my opinion) of the genome of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogastor. In actuality, (and despite all the hype) they only sequenced roughly half of the genome. The didn't do the third (60,000,000 bp) which contained repetitive DNA, and of the remaining two-thirds (120,000,000 bp), it was in several hundred pieces, of which they knew which they knew the chromosomal location of only 17 large fragments! There were also about 17,000,000 "N's" in the sequence. When all is taken into account (and the human DNA sequence contamination which they reported is subtracted), there's roughly 90 million bp of sequence left, or about HALF of the genome. They certianly HOPE that they've covered most of the genes, but I would not call this FINISHED. I guess I'm used to working with the bacterial genomes, where "finished" means you know every single letter in the entire genome - not about half the letters! A similar story is also likely for the human genome - only here, there is no solid experiment (that I'm aware of) which has determined explicitly the size of the human genome (in bp), but it has been known that the NON-REPETITIVE portion is roughly 3 billion bp long. Since it is also known more than half (about 60%, actually) of the human genome contains repeats, it is likely that the true value of the human genome size is around 6 billion nucleotides - thus when they say they've sequenced "95%" of the human genome, actually what is meant is that they've sequenced 95% of the 40% non-repetitive portion of the genome. Again, HOPEFULLY they've found most of the genes, but since the very best gene finders are only accurate 40% of the time, then there's lots of room for caution. Everyone made a big deal and was surprised that the human genome was so much smaller than originally thought (they found around 30,000 genes, and dogma was that there were 100,000 genes). But the 100,000 genes was just someone's guess - no one really had any good estimates. However, when you consider that many human genes come in pieces - some of them more than 25 pieces which can be spliced together in hundreds (or even thousands) of different combinations, then it is easy to see how you could get lots of different proteins from only a few genes.

Links to papers about the human genome project:
Articles in Science (Celera)
Aricles in Nature (the public-funded human genome consortium)
Articles in the New York Times
For more historical background on the human genome project, see also my review of Cook-Deegan's "Gene Wars".
"MICROGRAPHIA - or some Physiological Descriptions of MINUTE BODIES made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries thereupon" , by Robert Hooke, (Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1961). This is a facsimilie reproduction of the first edition, published in 1665 by the Royal Society, London. This is a wonderful book, although it is a bit hard to read the old style of writing, where an "s" looks like an "f". Of course, his description of cork is quite famous - it was fun to read his description of how the cork is divided into small chambers or "cells", a bit like a monk's cell. This is where the origins of the modern term "cell" comes from.
"EXPLODING THE GENE MYTH" , by Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, (Beacon Press, Boston, 1993). This is actually quite a good book. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical going in to it, but I think that Ruth Hubbard makes a lot of very good points. OF COURSE genes are important, but so is the environment. In many cases, people are using genes as an excuse to not impliment more painful (but effective) social solutions. For example, rather than deal with the problems of improving education in the public schools, if the schools can label the "problem children" as GENETICALLY predispositioned, then it's not the school's fault that the kids graduate from high school illeterate. If someone has the "gene" for obesity, then it's not THEIR FAULT that they are fat!

December, 2000
"ICONS OF EVOLUTION - Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong" , by Jonathan Wells, (Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C., 2000). I read this book over Christmas break, and have written a review of it for Skeptics magazine. In a nutshell, I was surprised that,despite all the publicity and slick packaging, the contents were pretty much a rehash of old creationist arguments. The idea is that most of the textbooks are touting "false icons" of evolution, and that there is a conspiracy of fraud amongst the scientists to try and trick the unsuspecting public into believing that evolution is true. Wells says things that are simply not true, quotes scientists out of context, and generally appeals to the ignorance of the readers, rather than trying to build up a rational argument and encourage people to think for themselves. The other day I was thinking about "Icons of Evolution", and came up with the following (paraphrase and perversion of Hebrew scripture):
And what is it that the Lord [Rev. Moon] requires of you [Jonathan Wells]??
To act unjustly, falsely accusing scientists of fraud,
to love having no mercy to your nasty Darwinist enemies,
and to walk proudly with the Discovery Institute.

Kind of cynical, I know. ;)

Link to a web-version of my review
"DARWIN'S ORCHESTRA - An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts" , by Michael Sims, (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1997). This book contains a reading for every day of the year. There are lots of little pieces of trivia about natural history.
"The Medusa and the Snail - More Notes of a Biology Watcher " , by Lewis Thomas, (Viking Press, New York, 1979). Although the book was written 20 years ago, there were lots of good insights that are still true today. One example is his chapter on cloning humans. Basically Lewis Thomas argues that in order to "truly" clone someone, with the same personality and mental traits, would require duplicating their environment, which would effectively mean trying to clone the whole world - it simply wouldn't work.

November, 2000
"CHARLES DARWIN - The Man and His Influence" , by Peter J. Bowler, (Basil Blackwell, Ltd., Oxford, England, 1990). This is a good biography of Charles Darwin. Bowler attempts to understand the environment in which Darwin wrote the Origins of the Species. I think one section in particular pretty well sums up the situation that still exists today:
"....The overall success of Darwin's campaign can be measured by the fact that the opponents were increasingly compelled to present alternative theories of how evolution worked. In effect they had given up creationism and conceded the basic point that new species were the transformed products of old ones. Their objections focused on Darwin's particular explanation of how the process worked. The nature of their objections and of their preferred alternatives show us that the real problem with natural selection was its challenge to the belief that the development of life had a structure revealing an underlying divine purpose. To rely on the selection of random variants by environmental pressure was to descend into pure materialism. Only by seeing regular patterns or some other sign of purpose in nature would it be possible to preserve traditional beliefs. The scientific arguments reflect underlying religious concerns, but these in turn reflect the ideological debate that was transforming the Victorian world. Huxley had his scientific doublts about the adequacy of natural selection but he was preparted to go along with Darwinism because he was committed to the view that progress must be the product of the everyday actions of natural forces. For many opponents it was precisely that underlying assumption that was open to question. Evolution might ocur, but if it was to be seen as the unfolding of a meaningful diving plan, there must be something visible in the process that could not be reduced to everyday events." (page 307)
"Is There a Creator Who Cares About You? " , (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1998). This book was sent to me by a reader of my review of Darwin's Black Box. The question was whether I had thought about the idea that maybe the word "day" in the bible might not mean a 24 hour day, but a long period of time - perhaps a thousand years. This is actually a fairly standard line, but there's still a "slight" problem of a difference of a MILLION fold longer time according to science (e.g., 4,500,000,000 years vs. maybe 4000 years). Overall, I have to admit that it was written much better and to a higher standard than I had expected. Except for the occasional reference to the seemingly strange (to me) ideas of the Jehovah's witnesses, the book read well, and was a good summary of many current ideas as written in the "popular science press". I did not find it nearly as "anti-science" as many of the creationist books tend to be.

October, 2000
"GENES, GENESIS, and GOD - Values and Their Origins In Natural History" , by Holmes Rolston, III, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999). This book aims to show that sociobiology is going in the wrong direction when it tries to reduce religion and ethics to mere biology. Holmes claims that values and ethics are more than "selfish genes" expressing themselves. On the one hand, this subject is of interest to me, but on the other, for whatever reason, I really had a hard time getting very excited about this book. Perhaps if I was to read it again sometime later, I might find it really interesting, but this time around it seemed pretty boring.

September, 2000
"The Molecular Origins of Life : Assembling Pieces of the Puzzle " , edited by Andre Brack, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999). This is a collection of chapters written by experts in the the field of various aspects of abiogenesis. I would highly recommend it for any one interested in the question of how life arose on planet earth. One of the things I learned from reading this is that certain types of "micro-meteorites" contain amino acids and many organic molecules, and furthermore, they can concentrate the amino acids from their surroundings.

August, 2000
"GENOME - The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters" , by Matt Ridley, (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1999). This is an excellent look at the human genome, with all of its implications. The view is very different than most people have, I think. It is also very recent, with many articles cited within the past year or two. I am absolutely amazed at how much we now know, as well as how much we still don't know. I think Ridley does a very good job of introducing the human genome, with a look at one chromosome for each chapter. (Actually, he tries to described one GENE from each chromosome, weaving it into a tale of the whole human genome.) He does a pretty good job of this, I think. I was surprised how much evolutionary biology was in this book. Obviously this is written from one person's perspective, but still it is a good introduction into the field.

July, 2000
"IN SIX DAYS - Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation" , by John F. Ashton, editor, (New Holland Publishers, Sydney, 1999). This book is a collection of essays from 50 different scientists, all holding Ph.D.s in various different scientific fields, about why they believe that the world was created in 6 days, less than 10,000 years ago. If nothing else, it is quite an interesting look at how different people tackle the same question, from various different viewpoints and levels of expertise, ranging from Archictectural Engineers to Zoologists. All 50 of the essays did have one thing in common, in addition to their belief in a "young-earth", and that is that they all invoked belief in a Christian God and a literal reading of Scriptures [Christian, of course] as their main motivation for their "scientific" position. A good summary of the position taken by many of the essays is found in the comments of Dr. Larry Vardiman, a meterologist who works for the Institute of Creation Reserach, in the U.S.

"....The most telling argument for me in rejecting evolution, however, is the meaninglessness and lack of value it signifies. If evolution occurred, then my existence is not a special event in the Creator's plan. Yet, the Bible says I am special; I was created for a purpose." (page 307)

While I can certainly understand this point of view, in my opinion it is hardly a compelling "scientific" argument. One of my favourite essays in the whole book (360 pages total), is from Dr. E. Theo Agard, a medical physicist:

"My belief in the supernatural creation of this world in six days is summarised largely in the following points: The theory of evolution is not as sound as many people would believe. In particular, the problem of the origin of life is well stated by the question 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' Every egg anyone has ever seen was laid by a chicken and every chicken hatched from an egg .Hence the first chicken or the first egg which appeared on the scene in any other way would be unnatural, to say the least. The natural laws under which scientists work are adequate for explaining how the world functions, but are inadequate for its origin, just as the tools which service an automobile are inadequate for its manufacture." (pages 196-197)

So. There you have it. Any more questions?

Link to a longer review of this book.
"GOD AFTER DARWIN: A Theology of Evolution" , by John F. Haught, (Westview Press, A Member of Perseus Books Group, Oxford, 2000). I found this book very interesting, although at times I felt like it was a bit "deep" for me. I'm not a theologian, but I certainly thought Haught's arguments were good and well-thought through. He was pretty hard on the "Intelligent Design" crowd throughout most of the book, which I found a first a bit puzzelling, but Haught convinced me that, among other things, they are over-emphasising the all powerfullness of God, at the expense of the image of a God that is willing to give up some control, in order in part for us to have a truly free choice. If God is truly in control, then is it notans are beyond our ability to fathom, and just because events seem to have ordinary causes, or seem to be the result of chance, does not mean that they are not part of the divine plan. This is the reason why no religious person would take issue with a geneticists's assertion that the sorting of the chromosomes in meiosis is random. Sure it is, every bit as random as flipping a coin, the impact of a meteor, or a sudden shift in climate that drives one species to extincition and allows another to survive.

"A Christian, specifically, sees his life, family, and his small place in history as parts of God's plan. He has faith that God expects him to use his talents and abilities in God's name. He accepts the adversity that comes into his life as a challenge from God, and he sees apparent misfortune as an opportunity to do good in the service of both God and man. these non-controversial elements of Christian teaching are so ordinary that we sometimes forget what they imply about the interplay of history, free-will, and chance. To put it simply, they mean that if God, if He exists, surpasses our ordinary understanding of chance and causality. Christians know that chance plays an undeniable role in history, and nonetheless accept the events that affect them in their daily lives as part of God's plan for each of them. This means that Christians already agree that the details of historical process can be driven by chance, that to allow for individual free will the outcome of such a process need not be preordained, and that the finjal result of the process may nonetheless be seen as part of God's will. These ordinary elements of religious teaching merge smoothly into everything we know about evolution." (pages 236-237).

A week after reading this book, I heard a debate between Ken Miller and Michael Behe on NPR. Miller challenged Behe to a debate at either the next meeting of the International Union of Biochemists (IUB, which Mike Behe is a member), or the equivalent association of cell biologists (which Ken Miller is a member). Mike accepted the challenge, and I look forward to seeing the debate. This really makes much more sense to discuss it in front of scientists. The meeting I attended two weeks ago was of the IUB, and there was more than two thousand posters, many of them about molecular evolution, but despite scanning several thousand abstracts over the week of the conference, I did not find a single poster with a reference to anything about "Intelligent Design". If this is so "scientific", then where is the evidence? Out of more than 11 MILLION published articles in the PubMed database, I could not find a single one proposing Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution. I suspect the reason for this is that the real motivation for the "Intelligent Design" movement is more religious, rather than scientific.
"THE TRIUMPH OF EVOLUTION, and the Failure of Creationism" , by Niles Eldredge, (W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, 2000). I have to admit, I am a big fan of Niles Eldredge, and so looked forward to reading this book. I was not disappointed. Elderidge spends the first half of the book simply explaining the story of evolution - how science works, and what evidence there is for evolution, in terms of the abundant geological record and also the abundant genetic evidence for descent from a common ancestor. Then in the second half of the book, he systematically goes through the Creationist attacks on evolution, including the so-called "Intelligent Design" movement, which I consider "neo-Creationismism". Elderidge points out that at least Phillip Johnson is being honest when he clearly states that this is a Christian movement, whereas some of the more recent Intelligent Design crowd want to substitute an "Intelligent Something" for the Designer. This is not "science", when one says that because it is so complicated it MUST have been CREATED by an "Intelligent Designer". This does not really answer any questions from a scientific point of view.
Elderidge knows about the Creationists from personal experience - he tells of his surprise to discover that he was being quoted in the Creationists literature as saying that evolution has not happened. It turns out that someone had taken a comment completely out of context (at best) and distorted it to suit their purposes. I couldn't agree more with his comments about the creationists:
"Creationists hear what they want to hear because they believe what they want to believe. They obviously think that all this is fair in both love and war, and they see this as a culture war. But somehow I persist in the apparently quaint belief that lying, cheating, and distortion are inherently unchristian." (page 134).

Link to a longer review of this book.
Link to a timeline table with major events in the history of evolution of earth (over the past 4.5 billion years or so).

June, 2000
"NOT IN OUR GENES: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature" , by R.C. Lewonin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1984). This is a scathing look at "genetic determinism". Even though the book was written 15 years ago, many of the arguments are still quite relevant today. In genetics, things have changed quite a bit since this book was written, and in some sense the idea of a gene for some behaviour has become a regular headline in newspapers, usually to be retracted a few months later, buried in small print somewhere. The main idea of the book is that we are not "merely" the product of our genes, and more imporantly, often what has happened (and what is currently happening) is that those who are in control are attempting to manipulate the system such that they maintain their position of power. Contrary to the notion that it is "all in our genes", which can mean "why not accept your fate?", the environment plays a very important role in our lives. I was somewhat surprised to read about the large number of children in publich schools who are given drugs to calm them down. Defining what is "normal" often depends on the context, and can be more subtle than one might think at first glance. If "normal" means making young males sit still in a boring classroom, than it becomes acceptable to dope them up so they can "fit in" with the rest. I learned a lot from reading this book, and would recommend this as a good source of skeptical background for people interested in sociobiology.
"A MONK and TWO PEAS - The Story of Gregor Mendel and the Discovery of Genetics" , by Robin Marantz Henig, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000; published in the USA as "A MONK in the GARDEN: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics", by Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2000). This is an excellent biography of Gergor Mendel. Although the author admits that some of the details of Mendel's life are not known for sure, the book is full of facts about his life, where he worked and lived, and some of his interactions with others.

I was surprised to read about the origins of the name "gene", especially in light of the fact that I am currently living in Denmark.
Wilhelm Johannsen, a professor of plant physiology at Copenhagen Agriculture College in Denmark, coined the word in 1909, four years after Bateson introduced 'genetics'. He derived it, he said, not as a contraction of genetics, but as a nod to Darwin's theory of pangenesis, from which De Vries had, in turn, created the word 'pangen'. Johannsen said he simply cut off the first syllable of De Vrie's word and turned the second syllable into something entirely new. 'The word gene is completely free of any hypothesis', he said. All it indicates is that 'many characteristics of the organism are specified in the gametes by means of special conditions, foundations, and determiners which are present in unique, separate, and thereby independent ways - in short, precisely what we wish to call genes'.

Along with 'gene', Johannsen introduced two other words that proved to be just as central to the emerging lexicon: 'phenotype', meaning an organism's appearance; and 'genotype', meaning its genetic makeup. This was a distinction Mendel had intuited more than fifty years earlier, before anyone had the ability - either conceptually or linguistically . to name it. In the case of an organism showing a recessive trait, genotype could be inferred from the phenotype, since the only way a recessive trait showed up in the phenotype was when the organism was double recessive. But when dominant traits appeared, further experimentation was required to see what the genootype was. The organism could be either a double dominant or a hybrid. (page 231).
"NATURAL GRACE - Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Sprituality and Science" , by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, (An Image Book, Published by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York, 1997). This was an interesting book written as a dialogue between a scientist and a priest. I have to admit that I had a bit of difficulty with some of the ideas of both authors. The priest (Matthew Fox) suggested that we should all become pantheists, and in another place said that he has problems with the idea of original sin. The scientist (Rubert Sheldrake) believes that if rats learn how to run a maze (say in Australia), then all future rats, anywhere in the world, given the same maze, will be able to learn more quickly, through morphogenetic fields. Sounds a bit strange to me. They both had many good things to say, but I am not sure how representitive they really are of a "typical" person in their field.

May, 2000
"SCIENCE & RELIGION - An Introduction" , by Alister E. McGrath, (Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Oxford, 1999). Allistor got his Ph.D. in "Molecular Biophysics", and then became interested in theology later, and he is now a professor in theology at Wycliffe college, Oxford University. This is a very good introduction to the subject, starting out with a historical background, and then going through some specific examples, and finally he ends with a discussion of several "key authors" in the area. In Chapter 5 ("Creation and the Sciences"), McGrath makes some very good points about ecology:
This vital theme of `the human right to mastery' is intimately connected with the rise of technology inthe modern period. In a remarkly astute analysis of the social role of technology, written in 1923, the Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher Romano Guardini (1885-1968) argues that the fundamental link between nature and culture has been severed as the result of the `machine'. Humanity was once prepared to regard nature as the expression of a will, intelligence and design that are `not of our own making'. Yet the rise of technology has opened up thepossibility of changing nature, of making it become something which it was not intended to be. Technology offers humanity the ability to impose its own authority upon nature, redirecting it for its own ends....
This ability to dominate and control nature will inevitably, according to at least some culture analysts, lead to the deification of technology, resulting in a culture which `seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfaction in technology, and takes its orders from technology' (Postman). As Moltmann correctly observes, blame for this development can hardly be laid at the door of Christianity, or any other religion. (page 121).
"FIVE KINGDOMS - An Illustrated Guide to the Phlya of Life on Earth" , by Lynn Margulis and Karlene V. Schwartz, (Third Edition, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1998). Aristotle divided all life into two kingdoms. Then, when micro-organisms were first characterised a few hundred years ago, there were THREE kingdoms. In the 1950's, a "Five Kingdom" classification scheme was proposed. The Five Kingdoms are: Animals, Fungi, Prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea), Proctista (single-celled organisms), and Plants. This is a very good look at the diversity of life. It also (of course) has a lot to do with evolution, and one of the authors (Lynn Margulis) is quite keen on the idea that some of the major transitions in life, such as the development of the first eukaryotic cell, are due to endosymbiosis. This theme is fleshed out in more detail in her "Symbiotic Planet". "The Five Kingdoms" is more of a reference book, with detailed listings and examples of all the major phyla in each kingdom.

April, 2000
"THE DARWIN WARS - The Scientific Battle for the Soul of Man" , by Andrew Brown, (Touchstone books, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., London, 1999). This book was a good read. My only complaint is that I finished it too soon! Most of the book is about the origins of sociobiology and the opposing views about human consciousness. As an aside, I found Brown's viewpoint of creationism in America is perhaps a good glimpse at the perspective of many people I've talked to here in Europe:
In America there is of course serious (though not intellectually) and well-organised opposition to Darwinism, just as there is a serious and well-organised movement to ensure that teenage children have ready access to automatic weapons and ammunition, and a large body of opinion that holds that all useful science originated in Africa. The sanity or historical plausibility of a message has no necessary correlation with its political importance in American culture. Despite a succession of crushing court victories which have kept `Creation Science' out of publicly funded classrooms, there is a steady quiet pressure which has kept explicit Darwinism out of widely sold textbooks, too. [see Dorothy Nelkin, "The Science Textbook Controversies", Scientific American, 234:33-39, 1976).] Not all of this can be put down to the malign influence of American Protestantism. As much, it seems to me, comes from the profoundly democratic and capitalist nature of America, which holds that everyone has a right to believe what pleases them, especially if there is money to be made out of this belief. The love of truth is the weakest of all human passions, said A.E. Housman, and it does not do much for the popularity of evolutionary biology to point out that this is true. The real enemy of science is not organised religion, but the guerrilla forces of disorganised credulity.
"C.S. LEWIS for the Third Millennium - Six Essays on The Abolition of Man" , by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1994). This book was sent to me by a friend in Chicago (thanks, Loy!). This book was a bit different that I had expected. I really like most anything that C.S. Lewis has written, so I looked forward to reading what Kreeft had to say. I think C.S. Lewis has some good and strong things to say about morality in his book "The Abolition of Man" - and in fact I think this is probably one of my favourite of his many books that I've read. Thus, I felt a bit awkard to see Lewis forced (in my opinion) into a right-wing American conservative mold. I guess after having seen a bit more into where C.S. Lewis lived and taught when I was at Oxford, I see him more in his role as a Christian apologist, rather than someone supporting Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America", or supporting the NRA. I certainly have no problem with striving for moral behaviour - but surely this must involve a bit of reflection about the larger role of society, rather than being mainly self-absorbed to the point of neglecting those in need around you.

March, 2000
"THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO - The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature" , by Alfred Russel Wallace (Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1962).
This book is an unabridged reproduction of the last revised work first published in 1869 by Macmillan and Company, London. t is quite interesting to see how Wallace describes his journey, in relation to Darwin's theory of evolution, which was being written at the same time Wallace was on his trip.
"How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness" ,by Harold S. Kushner (Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1996). I think that Rabbi Kushner once again shows keen insight into human personality, and our need to feel forgiven.

February, 2000
"Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms : Essays on Natural History" , by Stephen Jay Gould (Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999). This is (yet) another book of collections of articles for Natural History magazine. Gould has a very entertaining article about the relationship between Charles Darwin and James Dwight Dana - the latter being an American "geologist, biologist, longtime professor at Yale, and surely America's most preeminent indigenous natural historian of the nineteenth century." Dana was a creationist, and Gould discusses the differences in perspective the two had. I think this is well written and shows how one views the data depends on presuppositions.
[Amazon.com]
"ADAM's NAVAL and other essays" , by Stephen Jay Gould (from the "Penguin 60's" collection, Penguin Books, London, 1995). This is a tiny little, book, with a collection of four essays. The subject for the title essay is about a book (Omphalos) written by the British Naturalist Henry Gosse, in 1857, about why Adam was created with a navel. According to Gosse, Adam was created to "look old", in order to show a continuity with future men. Gould says the book is "spectacular nonsense", but it is worth looking at because "its author was such a serious and fascinating man, not a hopeless crank or malcontent.... When we grasp why Omphalos is so unacceptable (and not, by the way, for the reason usually cited), we will understand better how science and useful logic proceed..."
"GENESIS" ,translation and commentary by Robert Alter (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996). This is a new translation of the book of Genesis. I guess in a way it's kind of like reading a= Bible translation with a very thick commentary (that's equal in length (at least) to the text.

January, 2000
"The Beak of the Finch" ,by Jonathan Weiner (Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, 1994). This book won the Pulitzer prize. It is a good, detailed emperical look at evolution in action. Buried in the middle is a quote which explains why Phil Johnson and the people his "Discovery Institute" don't like Weiner:
"In his recent book, Darwin On Trial, the lawyer Phillip E. Johnson speaks sarcastically of ``all this supposing''. 'Gould supposes what he has to suppose, and Dawkins finds it easy to believe what he wants to believe, but supposing and believing are not enough to make scientific explanation''. Johnson writes, adding, ``The prevailing assumption in evolutionary science seems to be that speculative possibilities, without experimental confirmation, are all that is really necessary.''
There is now a simple experimental confirmation of this point. The experiment was published in the same year as Johnson's book, 1991. It was carried out by two evolutionists at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, working in a borrowed corner of the laboratory of Dolph Schluter... (page 182)
Towards the end of the book, Weiner notes that many of the farmers in states which are fighting to ban the teaching of evolution in the schools are at the same time having to struggle with the [evolutionary] adaption of insects which are destroying their crops. Over a period of only a few generations of crop-eating moths, the percentage which are resistant to insecticides has grown from 6% to more than 60%. Of course, in the absence of insecticide, the levels of resistance would go down again - this is the give and take of natural selection at work.
"CALENDAR - Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year" ,by David Ewing Duncan (Avon Books, Inc., New York, 1998). This is a very interesting history of the concept of time - how we wound up with a 7-day week, and 24 hours in a day. I guess I had not really thought about it before, but the idea of defining exactly what an hour (or day) is,has only fairly recently been established. I enjoyed the history of thedevelopment of clocks, and their relationship with the church in order to be able to tell people when to pray - and also the larger picture of how frustrated the church was in not being able to accurately figure out when Easter was.
"NOAH'S FLOOD - The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History" ,by William Ryan and Walter Pitman (A Touchstone Book by Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998). I read this at the recommendation of Mr. Merrifield, my high-school chemistry teacher, who I had visited in back in Arkansas over Christmas (1999). I thought the book was quite well written, and though they did a pretty good job of building the case for a devastating flood in the Mideast area about 7600 years ago. The authors speculate that this might have given rise to the flood stories from the epic of Gilgemesh to the Babylonians to the flood story in Genesis.
"ROCK OF AGES - Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life" ,by Stephen Jay Gould (The Library of Contemporary Thought, published by The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 1999). Gould proposes his "NOMA" - Non-Overlapping Magistrates of Authority - that is, that science and religion cover different aspects of the same thing, and there's no real reason for the two to fight each other. This is a clear example of Ian Barber's 2nd category of relationships between science and religion (Barber's four categories are: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration). In some ways I agree with Gould. However, I was left with a feeling of frustration at the end of the book, where he said that, on the one hand, there are clear standards for the truth in science, but on the other that everyone is kind of left on their own to decide whatever religious views they want. Sounds great and very tolerant, but a bit unfair - why doesn't Gould say that scientists should be free to do their own science as they please, such as ignoring experimental results in favour of their pet theories? My own personal feeling is that there is also some sort of necessary social organisation to religion, but it has seemingly collapsed in the West. I also find it hard to believe that there is no overlap whatsoever between science and religion. My own person views are I guess a bit of Independence and Dialogue. For example, I have no problem saying that the Universe is designed, or that God created life - I just don't think that one can use SCIENCE to prove either of these two beliefs.
"THE DEATH OF ADAM - Evolution and its impact on Western thought" ,by John C. Greene (Published as a MENTOR BOOK by arrangement with the Iowa State University Press, 1961). This is an intersting historical look at the influence of development of the physical sciences and the parallel decline in belief of a literal "Adam" - from the roughly 150 years between Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Thus, the book chronicles the "Death of Adam" by the time that Darwin wrote his Origins of the Species. I found it a very educational and interesting read. A lot of the creationists blame Darwin for the decline in moral standards in society - and yet this book clearly demonstrates that the fall started long before Darwin entered the scene.
"SYMBIOTIC PLANET - A new look at evolution" , by Lynn Margulis (Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, New York, 1998). Margulis is a strong proponent of the "endosymbiosis theory" of the origins of eukaryotic cells. Actually there is considerable evidence for the bacterial origins of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells, as well as for plant chloroplasts coming from ancient bacteria. The most compelling evidence (in my opinion) for this is from the DNA sequences in mtDNA organelles, which carry many of the same genes and characteristics as bacterial genomes. In fact, in some (mainly plant) mtDNAs, the size of the mtDNA is as larger or larger than that of many bacteria. Margulis also discusses the "GAIA" hypothesis - the idea that the organisms somehow interact with each other, and the biosphere behaves in some ways as one big creature. I have to admit that, on the one hand, I am a bit skeptical, on the other hand, I did find that some of the things that James Lovelock had to say in his GAIA book made some sense - that there are biological feedback mechanisms to control the amount of certain gases and heat within the atmosphere.
"A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE - The Hypothesis of Formative Causation" ,by Rupert Sheldrake (J.P.Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, Distributed by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1981). To be honest, I had not heard of this guy, until someone had emailed me, suggesting that I read something by Rupert Sheldrake, as an alternative to scientific materialism. Apparently Rupert is quite popular in some circles in Germany, and many of his books in German sell quite well. I found his ideas a bit strange. Sheldrake proposes the existence of "morphogenetic fields", kind of like magnetic fields or something, but which contain neurological information. An example that he gives in the book is that if someone was to train a rat to learn a maze, then this rat could somehow communicate its knowledge to all the other rats, so that learning would become progressively easier for rats throughout the world. He claims that this is why ritual is so important - when we perform an ancient religious ritual, such as citing the Apostle's creed in church, we are "resonating" with past learning, and even people in the future. On the one hand, it seems a bit odd, on the other hand, perhaps this is not THAT far removed from the idea that the Creeds represent a continuous link to the past. However, I'm not so sure this is really a serious contender as a scientific theory. Perhaps if someone could somehow detect these fields, this would be a start - but even then, I'm not sure there is a great problem here that needs to be solved. I don't know that many people who are concerned about how rats can learn mazes, nor does there seem to be that much evidence for this type of learning - if it occurs at all, it must be at such low levels that no one has ever noticed it before.

December, 1999
"SKEPTICS AND TRUE BELIEVERS - The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion" ,by Chet Raymo (Walker and Company, New York, 1998). Raymo is a professor of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College, and also writes a science column for the Boston Globe. I generally liked the book, although I felt that Raymo was saying the "true believers" were kind of ignorant and stupid, believing in old superstitions, whilst the "skeptics" had the enlightened truth. That's not much of a "connection between science and religion" - it sounds like he's pretty much saying religion is wrong and should admit defeat. However, despite this feeling, there were several good sections in the book, such as this:
"...However, many of us instinctively recoil from the mechanical metaphor of life, and especially for consciousness. We are put off by the idea that we might be merely machines. We cling to the notion that there is something magical, irreducible, and transcendent about life, something that will forever escape the molecular biologists with their computer models of chemical structures. ... The indispensably useful mechanical metaphor of life does not so much reduce the miraculous to the mundane as it elevates the mundane to the miraculous." (pages 40 - 41).
"THE WEB OF LIFE: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems" , by Fritjof Capra (Anchor Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York, 1996). This book is a good introduction into "systems thinking". It is along the lines of Stuart Kaufmann and others at the Complexity Instute in Santa Fe. He makes a good point about reductionism:
This triumph of molecular biology resulted in the widespread belief that all biological functions can be explained in terms of molecular structures and mechanisms. Thus most biologists have become fervent reductionists, concerned with molecular details. Molecular biology, originally a small branch of the life sciences, has now become the most pervasive and exclusive way of thinking that has led to a severe distortion of biological research.
At the same time, the problems that resist the mechanistic approach of molecular biology became ever more apparent during the second half of the century. While many biologists know the precise structure of a few genes, they know very little about the ways in which genes communicate and cooperate in the development of an organism. In other words, they know the alphabet of the genetic code, but have almost no idea of its syntax. It is now apparent that most of the DNA - perhaps as much as 95% percent - may be used for integrative activities about which biologists are likely to remain ignorant as long as they adhere to mechanistic models. (pages 77-78).
I agree completely - it is interesting along these lines to note that our bioinformatics group will soon be expanding and changing its name to a "systems biology" group, where we look at more wholistic interactions - modelling bacterial virulence, for example. I work with whole genomes, not merely small bits and pieces of genomes.
I feel also compelled to note that this approach is an alternative to the one proposed by some of the Intelligent Design crowd, who claim that since the reductionistic scheme doesn't work, this is evidence for some sort of SUPERNATURNATURAL explanation. Why not keep science where it has been successful - dealing with the material world with material explanations. It's not that science is saying things outside of the natural world we see around us don't exist - it is just that science cannot really deal with them.
"A GLORIOUS ACCIDENT - Understanding Our Place in the Cosmic Puzzle" , by Wim Kayzer (editor), (W.H. Freeman & Co., New York, 1997; first published in The Netherlands in 1995 by Uitgeverij Contact). The general theme of the book is where did consciousness come from, as described by six different professionals. The six are: Oliver Sacks, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould, Freeman Dyson, Rupert Sheldrake, and Stephen Toulmin. There are two parts to the book. The first section consists of interviews with the six people, and the second part is from a round-table discussion filmed for public television in the Netherlands (and also broadcast in the U.S.) There is certainly several different opinions expressed here, and it's a fun read.
"THE COSMIC SERPENT: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge" , by Jeremy Narby (translated from the French, "Le Serpent cosmiue, l'ADN et les origines du savoir", by the author, with the help of Jon Christensen; this edition was published by Phoenix Books, an imprint of Orion Books, Ltd., London, 1999). I found this at a bookstore at an airport in Maqnchester, England, and read it on a plane trip to the U.S. (in December, 1999). It was kind of fun reading, although I think the book is a bit silly. Basically the author (who is Swiss) spent some time working with the Peruvian Indians, and decided one night that the reason the Indians take psycho-active drugs is to allow the jungle to communicate with them - and he claims to have seen visions of things like snakes dancing, which represent the DNA double helix, and that there's something out there trying to communicate with us, if only we are receptive (e.g., taking the right psychodellic drugs!). The funny thing is, some of his arguments sound a bit like the creationists...

"As I patrolled the texts of biology, I discovered that the natural world was teeming with examples of behaviors which require forethought. Some crows manufacture tools with standardized hooks and toothed probes to help in their search for insects hidden in holes. Some chimpanzees, when infected with intestininal parasites, eat bitter, foul-tasting plants, which they otherwise avoid and which contain biologically active compounds that kill internal parasites. Some species of ants, with brains the size of a grain of sugar, raise herds of aphids which they milk for their sweek secretions and which they keep in barns. Other ants have been cultivating mushrooms as their exclusinve food for fifty million years. It is difficult to understand how these insects could do this without a form of consciousness." (page 138).
It is interesting to note that using the same type of reasoning as Michael Behe, Narby reaches the conclusion that the jungle is trying to talk to us, if only we were to smoke some hallucinogenic plant and get in touch with the spirits.
"DARK LIFE: Martian Nanobacteria, Rock-Eating Cave Bugs, and Other Extreme Organisms of Inner Earth and Outer Space" , by Michael Ray Taylor (Charles Schribner & Sons, New York, 1999). This book is mainly about bacterial life in the deep recesses of the earth. One popular theory is that life started not on the surface of this planet, but from within. Michael Ray lives in Arkansas, my native state. I read this in December, 1999. Taylor is a journalist, and tells the story of the discovery of possible bacteria in a rock sample from Mars. I'm still not sure what to make of the idea of nanobacteria. Taylor seems to imply that there is some sort of bias in scientists, in that living things smaller than about 2 micrometers can't exist. He points out that this is close to the resolution of our microscopes - and seems to think perhaps it is a bias in that if it is to smal to be seen with our microscope, then it is ignored. However, there is also another problem, and that is that the proposed size of these bacteria are in the range of a few hundred atoms thick - or in other words, the entire organism is approaching the same size as very large complex biomolecules. I don't know - it is an interesting idea, but no one has so far been able to show that these organisms have any DNA. Of course, it'd be very interesting if these nanobacteria have some other clever mechanism for replication. Taylor says that many things previously thought to have occurred naturally, over a long period of time, are now thought to be due to nanobacteria. (For example, he claims that Carlsbad caverns was formed by nanobacteria digesting the limestone, over perhaps a few hundred years.) Interesting ideas, and certainly something for me to think about, even if I am a bit skeptical...

November, 1999
"Master Control Genes in Development and Evolution: The Homeobox Story" (Terry Lectures) , by Walter J. Gehring and Frank Ruddle (Yale University Press, 1998). Gehring does an excellent job of explaining exciting results (which his lab was involved in) showing how that genes can control development. Chapter 12 ("The Role of Homeotic Genes in Evolution" is clearly written, and explains the significance of a set of genes ("homeobox genes") in development of the fly, but also in the development of animals in general, including humans.
"SUDDEN ORIGINS: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species" , by Jeffrey H. Schwartz (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1999). This book is pretty much a history of evolution, and (unfortunately) when he comes to the more recent topics like the homeobox mutations, Schwartz does not really seem to explain the mechanism of HOW "Sudden Origins" can happen. I have mixed feelings about the book - when I read some of the stuff which are closer to my area of interest and background seem to be a bit suspect, so I'm not sure how much I can trust what he writes about things which are more removed from my speciality. However, having said that, he DOES make some good points throughout the book, such as the following:

"....It seems that whenever you pick up a popular article or read a piece in a newspaper about evolutionary theory, the topic is described as ``Darwin's Theory of Evolution''. This, of course, is an incorrect attribution on various counts. Evolution is not a theory. It is a phenomenon. What evolutionists, whether Chevalier de Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, Niles Eldredge, or Stephen Jay Gould, strive to understand are the processes that make evolution tick. This is not an easy task, because evolutionary events occur over greater periods of time than any scientist, or generations of scientists, could observe - assuming they would know that such an event was taking place. Even Darwin was aware of the distinction between observing the results of the phenomenon of evolution and trying to understand the way or ways in which the results of evolution came about. Darwin's realization of this dichotomy - accepting the reality of a phenomenon and trying to understanding the workings of the phenomenon - is obvious in the title of his book On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection" (page 88)
"Origins of Life" , by Freeman J. Dyson (2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 1999). Dyson believes that life probably started as metabolism. (That is, the precursors to the first cells were replicating metabolic cycles.)

...There are accordingly two logical possibilities for life's origins. Either life began only once, with the functions of replication and metabolism already present in rudimentary form and linked together from the beginning, or life began twice, with two separate kinds of creatures, one kind capable of metabolism without exact replication and the other kind capable of replication without metabolism. If life began twice, the first beginning must have been with molecules resembling proteins, and the second beginning with molecules resembling nucleic acids. The first protein creatures might have existed independently for a long time, eating and growing and gradually evolving a more and more efficient metabolic apparatus. The nucleic acid creatures must have been obligatory parasites from the start, preying upon the protein creatures and using the products of protein metabolism to achieve their own replication.
The main theme of this book will be a critical examination of the second possibility, the possibility that life began twice. . . (pages 9-10).

October, 1999
"THE ORIGINS OF ORDER: Self-Organisation and Selection in Evolution" , by Stuart A. Kauffman (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993). This is a quite good, mathematical treatment of the subject. I learned a lot by plowing through it. (It is more than 600 pages!) Kauffman figures that, based on the fact that enzymatic reactions all occur in a limited volume, and that there are only so many different comformations available, the number of possible enzymes is not infinite, but rather a limited number. He estimates that there are roughly a million to a hundred million different enzymes might be sufficient as a "universal enzymatic tool kit". Thus, the important thing in terms of a protein sequence is which of the many possible conformations does this belong to, not "what are the chances of having THIS PARTICULAR AMINO ACID SEQUENCE. This is actually a them throughout the book - that nature (read EVOLUTION) is NOT the result of random processes (a common starting assumption for many creationists).
....To some great extent, evolution is a complex combinatorial optimization process in each of the coevolving species in a linked ecosystem, where the landscape of each actor deforms as the other actors move..... Therefore, I have made bold to suggest that much of the order we see in organisms is precisely the spontaneous order in the systems of which they are composed. Such order has beauty and elegance, casting an image of permanence and underlying law over biology. Evolution is not just 'chance caught on the wing'. It is not just a tinkering of the ad hoc, of bricolage, of contraption. It is emergent order honored andhoned by selection. (page 644)

September, 1999
"Imagined Worlds" (Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures) , by Freeman Dyson (Harvard University Press, 1998). Dyson is a physicist, and so is looking at things from a different perspective than biologists. I really liked his idea of looking at evolutionary time in terms of orders of magnitude - just like physicists look at various physical objects - some are very large (e.g., galaxies), and some are very very small (like atoms). I think the idea of a BILLION years of evolution is really difficult to grasp.
In chapter 3 ("Technology")Dyson discusses J.B.S. Haldane's book, Daedalus, or Science and the Future. Haldane was not too optimistic about the use of science: "The tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man, whom all the prophets and poets could not move, turns at last and extinguishes evil at its source." However, the technology which Haldane expected would have the most profound shocks to human society would come from biology - in particular the genetic engineering of microbes which would invade the oceans and replace agriculture as a source of food, and the technology of ectogenesis which would replace motherhood as a source of babies. Neither of these have happened - yet.

August, 1999
"The Divine Conspiracy", by Dallas Willard (Harper, San Fransisco, 1998). This book was sent to me from some friends, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I think he gives a lot of fresh insight about the "Discourse on the Hill"
"The Major Transitions in Evolution" , by John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary (W.H. Freeman, Oxford, 1995). This is a more detailed version of their "Origins of Life" book (published in 1999, I read it in May '99 - see below). The authors take the challenge of trying to explain the difficult transitions in evolution, and, in my opinion, they do a very good job of laying out the possibilities, and when necessary, saying "we don't know, but here's a good guess. . ."

July, 1999
"Silent Spring" , by Rachel Carsten (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1962). This is a classic book that in many ways started the environmentalist movement within the U.S. Rachel Carsten does an excellent job of writing and has also carefully researched everything she writes.
"THE FIFTH MIRACLE - The Search for the Origin of Life" , by Paul Davies, (Penguin Books, London, 1998).

June, 1999
"THE CRUCIBLE OF CREATION - The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals" , by Simon Conway Morris (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).
"Questioning the Millenium" , by Stephen Jay Gould (Vintage Books, Random House, London, 1998).
"THE LEXUS ANDTHE OLIVE TREE- Understanding Globalization" , by Thomas Friedman (Farrar Straus & Giroux, Boston, 1999). This was a birthday present from my parents. Thomas Friedman is one of my favourite editorial columnists (he is the "Foreign Affairs" correspondant for the New York Times).
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" , by Thomas S. Kuhn (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996 (third edition; the first edition was published in 1962).

May, 1999
"ON GIANTS' SHOULDERS - Great Scientists and their Discoveries from Archimedes to DNA" , by Melvyn Bragg (Sceptre books, London, 1998).
"THE ORIGINS OF LIFE - From the Birth of Life to the Oirign of Language" , by John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1999). This book is an excellent overview of many of the troubling transitions in evolution. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and feel like I learned several new things in the process. I love the way the book starts off - "Organisms are incredibly complex. . . ." in chapter 1, and then in chapter 2 "The theory of evolution by natural selection does not predict that organisms will get more comlex. It predicts only that they will get better at surviving and reproducing in the current environment, or at least that they will not get worse. Empirically, many and perhaps most lineages change little for many millions of years . . ." I think this is a very important point, and well said. I'm reminded of a figure from Stephen Jay Gould's book "Full House". (Actually, it is two figures - Figures 28 and 29 on pages 170-171.) Most animals and plants are at the tail end of a curve showing complexity - essentially the shape of the curved has changed little before and after the Cambrian explosion. All the "complex organisms" are just a tiny fraction of most of life!

Early on, the authors list 8 major transitions towards higher complexity, which are essentially the topics of individual chapters to follow.
These transitions are:

Replicating molecules --> Populations of molecules in protocells.
Independent replicators --> Independent replicators.
RNA as gene and enzyme --> DNA genes, protein enzymes.
Bacterial cells --> Cells with nuclei and organelles (eukaryotes).
Asexual clones --> Sexual populations.
Single-celled organisms --> Animals, plants, and fungi.
Solitary individuals --> Colonies with non-reproductive casts (ants, bees, and termites).
Primate societies --> Human societies (language).

This book is a "popularized version" of their more scientific book that came out in 1995 (The Major Transitions in Evolution). I'll have to eventually get my hands on this book and read it as well!
"Information and the Origin of Life" , by Bernd-Olaf Kuppers (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990; translated by Manu Scripta, Aarhus, Denmark - originally published under the title Der Ursprung biologischer Information: Zur Naturphilosophie der Lebensentstehung, in 1986 by R. Piper BmbH & Co.). I was reminded of Michael Behe's book when I read this one. The author asks the question of "where does biological information come from?" He offers three possibilites:

(1.) the chance hypothesis (he cites Jacque Monad's "Life and Necessity").
(2.) the teleological approach (which is close to Mike Behe's point of view).
(3.) the molecular-Darwinistic approach (a reductionistic approach, taking into account information theory and far-from-equilibrium chemistry).

I think that the Creationists (including the"Intelligent Design" people) focuses on the first two views only for the origins of complexity. Since the odds are so incredibly against complex structures just happening by chance (I think his reasoning is correct here), then it must be that science CAN'T explain the origin of complexity (I strongly disagree here). In my opinion, the third approach makes a lot of sense, and Kuppers does a good job of outlining his point of view.
Amazon.dk (original book, in German) Amazon.com (U.S., in English) Barnes&Noble

April, 1999
"LIFE IN THE BALANCE - Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis" , by Niles Eldredge (Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, USA, 1998). Niles Elderidge makes a very convincing argument that we are in the beginnings of the "Sixth Extinction", and this one is different in that it is being caused by man - in particular by the destruction of the ecosystems that most animals and plant need. Before, animals and plants could migrate with changing environmental conditions, but now they're becoming extinct because there isn't any place left for them to go! Having read this book right after Jared Diamond's book (see below), I must admit that I'm concerned whether humans can manage to prevent the destruction of the rest of the tropical rainforests. I'm also concerned that we might one day push the system too far, and all of the sudden realise that we are in fact still part of the earth's biosphere, and how much we depend on other species. Eldredge estimates that we depend on about 40,000 different species EACH DAY for our existence!
"The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee - How our animal heritage affects the way we live" , by Jared Diamond (Vintage books, London, 1992). This is a sobering book about our "animal roots". It was interesting to read the chapter about world genocides (chapter 16), and then read in the newspapers about what's presently going on in Kosovo. It is both disturbing and sad to realise that in fact genocide happens much more often than we want to admit.

On a more positive note, I really liked Diamonds example of how languages change with time. He used as an example a section of the 23rd Psalm (pages 230-231):

Modern (1989):
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He lets me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me to still waters.

King James Bible (1611):
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.

Middle English (1100-1500):
Our Lord gouerneth me, and nothyng shal defailen to me.
In the sted of pasture he sett me ther.
He norissed me upon water of fyllyng.

Old English (800-1066):
Drihten me raet, ne byth me nanes godes wan.
And he me geset on swythe good feohland.
And fedde me be waetera stathum.

March, 1999
"The Outer Reaches of Life" , by John Postgate (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994). I found this book very enjoyable. John Postgate does an excellent job of describing the different types of environments that bacteria can occupy, from surviving in the deep-freeze arctic to boiling sulfur springs to mineral deposits buried deep within the earth. I was reminded of Stephen Jay Gould's "Full House", where he says that bacteria probably constitute the majority of the biomass of the earth. There's also an excellent chapter on flagella - and it was quite nice to see a good description at the molecular level of the flagella, along the lines of Michael Behe's description in "Darwin's Black Box".

One of the themes I found interesting in the book was that of evolution. He mentions examples of how bacteria might have evolved to digest nasty man-made organic chemicals in the environment, through natural selection of degradation pathways of similar molecules. Also presented is a "time-line", starting with the formation of the Earth and moon, about 4,500,000,000 years ago. Essentially bacteria appeared as soon as fossils could be formed - about 3,500,000,000 years ago, and for the next 2,500,000,000 years it was only bacteria, then a few small multi-cellular organisms, and it's only within the past 500,000,000 years or so that more complex organisms appeared (and really only the last 65,000,000 years saw the development of "modern" plants and animals. So essentially bacteria have "ruled the earth" for most of the history, and still occupy an amazing range of places and, as pointed out in Postgate's last chapter, the bacteria are still necessary for establishing new territory. So, for example, he says that in the future it might be possible to send bacteria to mars to start preparing the surface, in terms of generating an atmosphere and also the beginnings of a biological ecosystem, for the eventual habitation of humans.
( link to reviews from Amazon.com)
"Clones, Genes, and Immortality: Ethics and the Genetic Revolution" , by John Harris (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998) I have to admit that this book was a bit different than I had thought when I bought it. First, it turns out that this is essentially a slightly updated version of an earlier book, called "Superman and Wonderwoman". I was a bit frustrated that most of the references were to articles from "The Guardian" newspaper, mainly in 1988 and 1989, when the earlier version of the book was being written. I have read lots of interesting articles in the newspapers about the bioethics of cloning. In fact just yesterday there was an article I thought was quite good, in the "Washington Post". Does this make me an authority? Speaking of ethics, is it "ethical" to repackage an old book and sell it as if it is something more recent and timely than it really is? Actually, many of the issues are not that much different now than they were 10 years ago, when most of the book seems to have been written - after all, I suppose, Aristotle's "Ethics" is still popular. However, I am skeptical of someone using accounts from the popular press (newspapers and books like Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene", [cited in the list of "Texts dealing with ethics, law and biotechnology", page 307]) as a basis for forming their ethics.

As a teacher of Genetics, I found the last bit, where he talks about the ethics of genetic engineering of humans enjoyable, but again, some of the issues were a bit dated. At a recent seminar with the title "Genes, Genomes and Society", the speaker declared that he thought human cloning would soon be as common as IVF, which presently is quite common, with several thousand clinics in the U.S. One issue that was not discussed very much was the idea of creating a new human species. Starting in 1997, I have had discussions with my Genetics class about the introduction of "HACs", or Human Artificial Chromosomes - I think it is important to encourage students to think some about the ethical implications of this. Presently, these are of course in experimental cell lines only, but if they were to be introduced into an embryo, it would be possible to make humans with an extra chromosome - "custom built" for adding whatever gene(s) might be necessary or fashionable. Because the gametes from such a person would most likely only be able properly segregate with another person with the extra chromosome, you would in effect have a distinct species - in the biological sense of the word - that is, not capable of interbreeding with the "normal" human population. I kept thinking of the movie "GATTACA", when I was reading this book. ( link to amazon.com)
"Pattern of Evolution" , by Niles Eldridge (W.H. Freeman, New York, 1998). Niles Eldridge picks up where he left off in "Reinventing Darwin" and "Fossils: The Evolution and Extinction of Species", and takes the reader on a tour of the history of evolution. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He starts off with admitting he caught himself at one moment contemplating whether Richard Dawkins might actually have been correct in his "selfish gene" theory about evolution. "My God, Richard Dawkins must be right after all!" he exclaims on the first page. But soon he calms down, takes a deep breath, and looks at the larger picture. He argues (convincingly, in my opinion) that evolution (in the sense of progression towards new species) does not occur all the time, and that in fact species are quite stable and will last for millions of years, until some sort of environmental event happens which wipes out not only species but entire ecosystems as well. Most of the time, if there's a local change in the environment, the species could simply move. But sometimes events happen which results in extinction (in fact, the species today represent less than 1% of all species that have ever existed). Evolution occurs from the survivors of extinction, radiating to fill in new niches. This is Darwinian evolution, but not quite the gradual improvement often taught by the "Ulta-Darwinists". I found this book a delight to read, and thought he did an excellent job of summarising the history of the attempts to unite evolution with modern genetics. ( link to reviews from Amazon.com )

February, 1999
"GALILEO's Commandment - An Anthology of Great Science Writing" , Edited by Edmund Balir Bolles (W.H. Freeman, New York, 1997). This is an excellent book! I really enjoyed all the essays by different scientists. It was good to see so many scientists writing clear essays for the "general reader" describing recent advances in their field. The earliest was from Herodotus (444 B.C.), but by far most of the essays were from scientists writing in the 1900's. I have a much better feel and appreciation for the breadth of science after reading this book! It was wonderful to read the original articles. I was quite impressed with Alfred Russel Wallace's essay on evolution. ( link to reviews from Amazon.com)

January, 1999
"BIOLOGY through the eyes of faith" , by Richard T. Wright (Harper San Fransisco, 1989).

December, 1998
"THE CREATORS - A History of Heroes of the Imagination " , by Daniel J. Boorstin (Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, New York, 1993).

November, 1998
"DARWIN ON TRIAL" , by Phillip E. Johnson (2nd edition, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1993).
"UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW - Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder" , by Richard Dawkins (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1998).

October, 1998
"Advances in GENOME BIOLOGY, Volume 5a - Genes and Genomes" , Edited by Ram S. Verma (JAI Press, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut, 1998).

September, 1998
"GAIA - A New Look at Life on Earth" , by James Lovelock (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979).
"CHANCE and NECESSITY - An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology" , by Jacques Monad (translated from the French by Austryn Wainhouse; Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, New York, 1971). This is a "classic" by the Nobel-winning biologist who discovered and characterised the first bacterial operon. This is a nice companion to "THE LOGIC OF LIFE - A History of Heredity" by Francois Jacob. Monad in many ways sounds like an earlier version of Richard Dawkins. Here's a representative quote:

"...Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced by the machinery of invariance and thus converted into order, rule necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself...."
"Understanding DNA: The Molecule and How it Works" , by C. R. Calladine and Horace R. Drew (2nd Edition, Academic Press, New York, 1997). I really enjoyed the first edition of this book, and think this is an excellent book to provide a molecular and structural basis for understanding how the DNA helix is put together.

August, 1998
"Discovering the first complex life - The GARDEN of EDIACARA" , by Mark A. S. McMenamin (Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 1997).
"WHAT IS LIFE? THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS - Speculations on the future of biology" , Edited by Michael P. Murphy and Luke A.J. O'Neill (Cambridge University Press, paperback edition, 1997).
"The Life of the Cosmos" , by Lee Smolin (Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 1997).

July, 1998
"How Nature Works - The Science of Self-Organized Criticality" , by Per Back, (Oxford University Press, 1997).
"AT WAR WITHIN - The Double-Edged Sword of Immunity" , by William R. Clark (Oxford University Press, 1995).
"THE lac OPERON - A Short History of a Genetic Paradigm" , by Benno-Muller-Hill (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1996).

Here's the "Readers' Comment" I wrote for Amazon.com :
The lac Operon, a Paradigm of Beauty and Efficiency In "The lac Operon - A Short History of a Genetic Paradigm", Benno Mueller-Hill does an excellent job of describing the history, mistakes, and present-day view of the lac operon. I found it an enjoyable read. The book is written at a level that assumes the reader already knows a bit about molecular biology, and starts with "A Short History of the lac System from its Beginning to 1978". I found the middle section most interesting, where the mistaken interpretations of the lac operon are considered. This would be a very educational read for students (and post-docs and researchers) in the field. Finally, the last section discusses the current model for how the lac Operon works; this model has not made it to many of the undergraduate molecular biology / Genetics textbooks yet. Overall I was quite happy with this short book on the first bacterial operon to be characterised.
"THE DISCOVERERS - A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself" , by Daniel J. Boorstin (Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, New York, 1985).

June, 1998
"GUNS, GERMS and STEEL - A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years" , by Jared Diamond (Vintage Books, A Division of Random House UK, London, 1997).
"AT HOME IN THE UNIVERSE - The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity" , by Stuart Kauffman (Oxford University Press, New York, 1995).
"HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED ITS SPOTS - The Evolution of Complexity" , by Brian Goodwin (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1994).
"STEPHEN HAWKING: Quest for a Theory of Everything - The Story of his life and work " , by Kitty Ferguson (Bantam Books, New York, 1991).

May, 1998
"SUMMER FOR THE GODS - The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion" , by Edward J. Larson (Basic Books, A Subsidiary of Perseus Books, L.L.C. Press, New York, 1997).
"SIGNS OF LIFE: The Language and Meanings of DNA " , by Robert Pollack (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1994).
"FRONTIERS OF COMPLEXITY - The Search for Order in a Chaotic World" , by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield (Faber and Faber, Ltd., London, 1995).

April, 1998
"THE SCIENCE OF GOD: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom" , by Gerald L. Schroeder (The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1997).
"THE TRANSFORMING PRINCIPLE - Discovering that Genes Are Made of DNA" , by Maclyn McCarty (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1985).
"The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World " , by Rob Desalle and David Lindley (Harper-Collins, New York, 1998).

March, 1998
"An Easy-to-Understand Guide for DEFEATING DARWINISM by Opening Minds" , by Phillip E. Johnson (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1997).
"DARWINISM DEFENDED - A Guide to the Evolution Controversies " , by Michael Ruse, (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, London, 1982).

February, 1998
"FOSSILS - The Evolution and Extinction of Species " , by Niles Eldredge (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1991).
"HIDDEN ORDER - How Adaptation Builds Complexity " , by John H. Holland (Helix Books, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., Reading, Massachusetts, 1995).

January, 1998
"DARWIN'S BLACK BOX - The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution " , by Michael J. Behe (The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1996).

Link to my book review for bios magazine (written in July, 1998).)
A list of reviews of Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box"
Link to reviews from Amazon.com
"DINOSAUR IN A HAYSTACK - Reflections in Natural History "

December, 1997

"GENETICS - Principles and Analysis - 4th Edition" , by Daniel L. Hartl and Elizabeth Jones (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, Massachusetts, 1997).
"FULL HOUSE - The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin " , by Stephen Jay Gould (Three Rivers Press, New York, 1996).

November, 1997
"CLIMBING MOUNT IMPROBABLE " , by Richard Dawkins (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1997).

October, 1997
"The GENE WARS - Science, Politics, and the Human Genome " , by Robert Cook-Deegan (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1995).
(Click here for a link to the review of this book for Bios magazine, written in December, 1997).

September, 1997
"THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE " , by Edward O. Wilson (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992).
"INVISIBLE FRONTIERS - The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene" , by Stephen S. Hall, 1987; (Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, Redmond, Washington, USA)

August, 1997
"BIOINFORMATICS - The Machine Learning Approach " , by Pierre Baldi and Søren Brunak (MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., 1998) I read through this book in manuscript form, for Søren Brunak. This is an excellent introduction to the field, and it is text for the bioinformatics course taught here at CBS.
"Brave New World" , by Aldus Huxley, (The Abatros copyright edition, Leipzig, 1938). I bought this at a church book sale in Copenhagen, for 20 Danish crowns (about $3.00 U.S.). I had never read the complete book before, and was amazed at how insightful Huxley was about future trends. In many ways, the book reads more like it was written in the 1960s than in the late 1930s. Also, I thought there was some interesting political symbolism in the names - Bernard MARX, and LENINa and the great "FORD". In some ways it is frightening in that it might be where we are headed, say in another 50 to 100 years.
"AN INTRODUCTION TO GENETIC ANALYSIS" , by Griffiths et al., 6th edition; (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Simon &Schuster/A Viacom Company, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA, 1996).

July, 1997
"The DNA MYSTIQUE - The Gene as a cultural icon" , by Dorothy Nelkin & M. Susan Lindee, 1995; (W.H. Freeman & Co., New York, USA).
"LIFE ON EARTH", by Teresa Audesirk and Gerald Audesirk, (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Simon &Schuster/A Viacom Company, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA, 1996). I read this in preparation for my lectures in a "Biology for non-majors" class. I thought it was a pretty good book, for an Introduction to Biology, for a one-semester course for people who were not going to major in biology.

There were 5 chapters on evolution, and I thought most of them were well-written. However, in the introductory paragraph, they make what I consider a major historical error:
". . . To explain the origin and diversity of life on Earth, nearly all peoples of the world historically turned to the hypothesis of creationism. The most common of these hypothesis is that a supernatural being created each type of organism individually at the beginning of the world and that all modern organisms are essentially unchanged descendants of those ancestors.
Throughout history, however, scientists have sought natural causes for the origin of species . . .

First, when the text says "The most common of these...", really they should say, "At the time of Darwin, the most common. . ." Second, spontaneous generation, or a "natural" method was believed to be the method of creation, for most of western history - from at least 500 B.C. until the 1800's. This method was believed by nearly everyone - scientists as well as theologians.

For more on this, here is a link to my "journal" which includes an extensive discussion about six different views of creationism.

Link to my lectures on Evolution for Biology 101 class (Spring term, 1998).)

leaf bar

Links to MORE lists of books

CORRESPONDENCE

David W. Ussery:

This file was last modified Wednesday 3rd of December 2003 08:38:33 GMT