The book, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, is a detailed inquiry into the influence of the idea of on conceptions of biological evolution. By progress Michael Ruse means three things: (1) social and political (Ruse dubs it capital P Progress), which for the most part consists of ideals, practices, and institutions urged by middle-class reformers (and working-class revolutionaries) against their aristocratic and clerical enemies, usually with the suggestion that something bigger and deeper than sheer effort is driving us toward these sorts of improvement; (2) biological progress, which can be absolute or comparative-absolute when someone says, for example, that humans are in some sense better than amoebas, or indeed than other members of the genus Homo; comparative when one believes, with Darwin, that if earlier species were placed in the same competitive environment with recent ones the former would be beaten hollow and exterminated (letter to Hooker, December 31, 1858, quoted by Ruse, p, 151); and (3) scientific progress, that is, improvement in understanding the objective nature of the world by way of systematic disinterested inquiry. Ruse's thesis is that, recently, there has been a high correlation between the belief of prominent evolutionists in Progress (1) and their picture of life as progressing (2) absolutely-too high a correlation, in fact, to inspire much confidence that evolutionary inquiry has been sufficiently buffered from the intrusion of cultural to permit in sense (3). I say until recently because Ruse claims that things have changed for the better. Scientific (3) is now being made in evolutionary work. This is not, Ruse believes, because prominent evolutionists (as contrasted, say, with downbeat contemporary humanists) no longer believe in Progress (1). Ruse reports that they generally do, if only because they are keen on the role of science in bringing it about. Nor is being made, Ruse says, because evolutionists have finally shucked off the myth of biological (2). Among many evolutionists, Ruse finds a somewhat hidden, but nonetheless real commitment to absolute, as well as to comparative, of this sort. No, evolutionary science now makes steady scientific (3), Ruse argues, because professional standards of scientific inquiry, and the epistemic values that go with