Book finished: River Out of Eden
13/07/2014
A good overview, but I learned little.
I was a bit disappointed in this. I will boast and say I have read so much on this subject it is hard to find anything new, and this turned out to be a 1995 publication. Thankfully only 172 pages long, it only lasted me two days of rail commute reading time.
All the way through I just kept saying to myself, "Yes, yes, we know this, get on with it!" It is a useful reminder to keep you on your toes with evolutionary theory. Too early for any mention of the Denisovans, little on genetic sequencing, but does cover the inadequacy of the "tree" view of genetic relationships. He is very keen to defend the scientific point of view and actively proposes strategies for the confounding of religious and relativistic doubters of Darwinian theory. I can see how he came to write The God Delusion (2006). He comes across as a bit self-righteous sometimes, although not as irritating as Thoreaux. I have just looked him up in Wikipedia to get that book title; I see he has had disputes with Stephen Jay Gould, whose writing I have found more to my taste. I must mention that I read his The Selfish Gene (1976) at the time and thought it a great approach to understanding evolution that certainly influenced my ideas for years. |
For anyone not familiar with evolutionary theory, this would still be good general overview of the subject.
Read as an e-book borrowed from Auckland Libraries via Overdrive, on my Kobo Touch e-reader