Evolution After Darwin: Vol. I—The Evolution of Life; Vol. II—The Evolution of Man ed. by Sol Tax (review)

Abstract

Evolution After Darwin: Vol. I—The Evolution of Life; Vol. II—The Evolution ofMan. Edited by Sol Tax. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, i960. $10.00 each. It has taken a hundred years for the study ofevolution to return to the language in which it started. Darwin spoke ofisland birds and snails, of changes in butterflies and beetles over a geographic range, proud hoofs ofhorses and the ways offlowering plants. Wallace, in 1855, showed that the distribution ofanimals in time, in the fossil series, was in the same pattern as their distribution in space, and drew from this observation strong circumstantial evidence for evolution, three years before the joint publication with Darwin in 1858. The approach ofboth men was ecological. From this start the study of evolution retreated to the laboratory, and Elton caused some surprise in biological circles by including in his 1927 Animal Ecology a chapter on "Ecology and Evolution." What could ecology have to do with evolution? We have now returned to the outdoors—where, after all, most animals and plants live. The geneticists, backed by years of work on Drosophila and Gammams, have been discovering how their immense laboratory knowledge can be applied to, and modified by, the study ofnatural populations in their natural surroundings. This comes out with particular brilliance in E. B. Ford's essay in this Chicago symposium. Dr. Ford and his group are studying evolution at work, from year to year and from month to month. Professor Dobzhansky's contribution on "Evolution and Environment" brings fresh air from California , Mexico, and Brazil. The title ofSewall Wright's paper includes the term "ecology ofpopulations." Marston Bates's paper is on "Ecology and Evolution," and contains a discussion ofthe evolution ofcommunities, or paleoecology. Emerson writes on levels of integration and on selection at levels higher than that ofthe individual or ofthe species population. Andinthe second volume, ontheevolutionofman,his cultures, and societies, the ecological approach is made quite plain. Dr. Emiliani, for instance, makes the suggestion that ifthe Pleistocene glaciations had not occurred, modern man might have failed to develop, because Pithecanthropus wouldhave spread over the whole earth. Glaciations split the hominid populations into small groups, allowing our forebears to go their own way. These two volumes are in fact unusually difficult to review; each volume alone would be difficult. They contain forty-two long papers from the pens ofmany ofthe pioneers in the field and some of the old hands. On the historical time-line, they range from Sir Julian Huxley's very able account of Darwin himself to examinations by H. J. Müller and Sir Charles Galton Darwin of the prospect of man controlling his own evolution. Harlow Shapley's reminder that "terrestrial biological evolution is but a rather small affair, a complicated side show" compared with the total cosmic development, contrasts with Dr. Leakey's decision to place the origin ofman, that insignificant creature, squarely on the continent of Africa, and about the middle ofit at that. Some of the papers are paleontological and descriptive, as those ofG. G. Simpson and Daniel Axelrod. Some are closely analytical and often somewhat difficult, such as Professor Bernhard Rensch's essay on the "laws ofevolution," which is both Teutonic and oddly medieval in flavor. I am not sure in what sense he refers to Darwin as "the ingenious English scientist," but I hope that it is not with the attitude shown by Radi, some years ago, who wrote: "Darwinism was never taught in England as a scientific system. German scholars were the first to trans268 Book Reviews Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1961 form this teaching into a school ofthought. It was the Germans who gave it a dogmatic and logical form." Boo. Volume I, The Evolution ofLife, shows how much further we have travelled toward understanding evolution as such than toward understanding the strictly human evolution and the development ofcultures and mind, described in fairly generalterms in Volume II. Man as an animal is better known than is man as a man. The complexity ofselection becomes greater the more we study it, both culturally and ecologically. One of the most interesting papers—at least to this reviewer—and one which certainly emphasizes the...