Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated

by Steve Jones

Overview

Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is probably the best-known, least-read book. One of the most important achievements of the past millennium, it did for biology what Galileo did for astronomy: made it into a single science rather than a collection of unrelated facts. Important though Origin remains, its examples and intricate Victorian prose are now a century and a half old. They are ripe for renewal and reaffirmation. Writing as "Darwin's ghost," eminent geneticist Steve Jones updates this seminal work—and restates evolution's case for the 21st century.

Jones is a writer of engaging wit and dazzling erudition and has been called "the British Carl Sagan." Using modern examples—the AIDS virus, the puzzles of sexual selection, the physiology and psychology of pets, and the unparalleled genetic success of our own species—he shows the power and immediacy of Darwin's great argument and makes us appreciate how it makes life make sense. Eye-opening and entertaining, filled with astonishing facts, amusing anecdotes, and the very latest research, Darwin's Ghost is contemporary science writing at its very best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345422774
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/03/2001
Edition description:	1 Ballantine Edition
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	514,692
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.26(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London and has worked at universities in the U.S., Australia and Africa. His previous books include The Language of the Genes and In the Blood.

Read an Excerpt

According to a 1991 opinion poll, a hundred million Americans believe that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time during the last ten thousand years." A large majority saw no reason to oppose the teaching of creationism in schools. They followed in a long tradition. A text of 1923, Hell and the High Schools, claimed that: "The
Germans who poisoned the wells and springs of northern France and
Belgium and fed little children poisoned candy were angels compared to the text-book writers and publishers who are poisoning the books used in our schools . . . Next to the fall of Adam and Eve, Evolution and the teaching of Evolution in tax-supported schools is the greatest curse that ever fell upon this earth."

Fifty pieces of legislation tried to put a stop to the subject. All failed. Undeterred, Alabama called for a note to be pasted into textbooks: "This book may discuss evolution, a controversial theory some scientists give as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals and humans . . . No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact." In 1999 the Kansas
Board of Education voted to remove evolution from the school curriculum and no doubt other states will try similar tricks.

Such intolerance is new. At the end of the last century few clerics opposed the idea of evolution. In spite of polemic against a
"genealogical table which begins in the mud, has a monkey in the middle and an infidel at the tail" most were ready to accept a compromise between The Origin and the Bible. A Day of Creation might be millions of years long, or might represent six real days that marked the origin of a spiritual Man after the long ages it took all else to evolve. Real bigotry had to wait for modern times.

The creationist movement is part of a triumphal New Ignorance that rules in many places, the United States more than most. In fact, the majority of those determined to tell lies to children believe in Darwin's theory and understand how it works, without noticing. Evolution is embedded in the American consciousness for a simple and terrible reason. For the past two decades the nation has lived through an episode that has, with extraordinary speed, laid bare the argument of The Origin of Species.
The organism involved was unknown in the nineteenth century, but is now familiar. It is the AIDS virus.

Creationists find it easy to accept the science of AIDS. Its arrival so close to the millennium and the Last Judgment is a useful illustration of God's wrath. Homosexuals, they claim, have declared war on nature,
and nature has exacted an awful retribution. Fundamentalists admit the evolution of a virus as nature's revenge but will not concede that the same process acts upon life as a whole.

Even to anti-evolutionists, AIDS is proof of descent with modification because they can see it happening. Its agent has changed in its brief history and has adapted to overcome the many challenges with which it is faced. As death approaches, a patient may be the home of creatures—descendants of those that infected him—as different as are humans and apes. Every continent, with its own sexual habits, has its own exquisitely adjusted set of viruses; and AIDS has relatives in animals quite different from ourselves. Darwin would have been delighted to see the workings of his machine so starkly exposed.

Science makes patterns from ideas. If AIDS can evolve, so can anything else. The Origin uses freshwater bears and flying fish to make a case that applies to all forms of life. For its opponents, in contrast, what is true for viruses cannot be true of birds or fish, let alone a man.
The existence of an animal as unlikely as a whale is, for them, proof that evolution does not work.

The other view of the origin of whales, men or viruses is simple. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

Every part of Darwin's thesis is open to test. The clues—from fossils,
genes or geography—differ in each case, but from all of them comes the conclusion that the whole of life is kin. That is no mere assertion, but a chain of deduction with every link complete. The biography of the AIDS
virus, one of Nature's newest and tiniest products, is almost complete and that of whales—the largest animals ever seen—is fragmentary, but they are cousins under the skin. The AIDS virus is change seen under the microscope, and the whale the same process viewed, in glimpses and over long ages, through a biological telescope. Evolution at the extremes of size is an apt prelude to the great drama that is Darwinism.

Table of Contents

	The Origin of Species: Facsimile Title Page and List of Contents	ix
	An Historical Sketch of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species	xvii
	Introduction	1
I	Variation Under Domestication	21
II	Variation Under Nature	40
III	Struggle for Existence	55
IV	Natural Selection	69
V	Laws of Variation	102
VI	Difficulties on Theory	119
VII	Instinct	144
VIII	Hybridism	169
IX	On the Imperfection of the Geological Record	190
X	On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings	213
XI	Geographical Distribution	235
XII	Geographical Distribution--continued	257
XIII	Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings; Morphology; Embryology; Rudimentary Organs	275
	Interlude: Almost Like a Whale?	309
XIV	Recapitulation and Conclusion	331
	Further Reading	351
	Index	361

Editorial Reviews

"There are few better or more entertaining accounts of the evolutionary process in print today than Darwin's Ghost."
—The New York Times Book Review

"FASCINATING AND WITTY. . . WRITTEN WITH GREAT AUTHORITY AND A FLUID STYLE . . . [STEVE JONES IS A] SUPERIOR COMMUNICATOR—HUMANE, APPROACHABLE, FUNNY."
—The Boston Sunday Globe

From the Publisher

When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species in 1859, he initiated a process that revolutionized biology and prompted humans to reconceptualize their place in the universe. Indeed, Darwin, coupling impeccable logic with a wealth of examples drawn from biology and geology, was able to win a huge number of scientific converts. A century and a half later, the book still stands as a monumental work of both science and literature, although, not surprisingly, other scientists have taught us a great deal more about evolution during those years. Jones (The Language of Genes), a professor of genetics at University College, London, has had the wonderful idea of revisiting Darwin's work, updating each chapter with the best that modern science has to offer. His execution of that idea succeeds brilliantly, on two levels. Darwin's genius is reaffirmed; having access to such a limited array of information, he was, Jones demonstrates, nonetheless correct in virtually every one of his hypotheses. And the ideas in Jones's updated Origin are every bit as powerful an organizing principle for all of biology as were Darwin's original thoughts. When Darwin first drafted Origin, the subfields of genetics, molecular biology and cladistics did not yet exist, while biogeography, geology, archeology and physiology were mere hints of their current selves. Jones, using humor and wit, draws from all these arenas to present a compelling case for evolution, one that is as accessible to the general reader as it is engaging to the specialist. Agent, Russell Galen. Author tour. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Using recent empirical evidence, Jones (genetics, Univ. Coll., London) has updated Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (l859) so that the fact of organic evolution is both understandable and relevant to today's general reader. He focuses on dogs, whales, snails, insects, bacteria, and, particularly, the AIDS retrovirus in order to illustrate the struggle for existence and descent with modification through genetic variation and natural selection. Special attention is given to social instincts, biogeography, biodiversity, and the evolutionary affinities among similar species through a common descent. The author stresses that all species and their environments are continuously changing (sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly), e.g., the organisms and their habitats on the Galapagos and Hawaiian Islands. Furthermore, since Darwin's writings, serious problems with the theory of evolution are being solved in light of ongoing scientific discoveries in population genetics, geopaleontology, and radiometric dating techniques. Very informative and cogently argued, this book is an important addition to the natural history literature. Recommended for all science collections.--H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

Jones has rewritten Darwin's narrative with the help of the latest insights from evolutionary biology. . . . There are few better or more entertaining accounts of the evolutionary process in print today.
—The New York Times Book Review

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