Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology

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Dorothy Kurth Boberg

Boberg presents a survey of the 3.8 million year fossil record, recent anthropological discoveries, and her new theory of complementary systems evolution.

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Michael Ruse

Since its original publication, Taking Darwin Seriously has established itself as one of the most important works of evolutionary naturalism since Charles Darwin's Origin of Species over a century ago. Applying evolutionary biology to philosophical problems of epistemology and ethics, it definitively establishes a naturalistic approach to our understanding of life's major problems. Updated with a new preface and a final chapter that addresses the most recent developments in and popular attacks on contemporary evolution, this is an essential work for those interested in the implications of modern Darwinism - especially human sociobiology - for questions in the theory of knowledge and of moral behaviour and thought. Written in a style accessible to both the professional and the general reader, Taking Darwin Seriously is intended as a direct challenge to all who would push creationism as a credible alternative to scientific evolution in public schools, universities, and as a general theory for public consumption.

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Kim Sterelny

"Science has seen its fair share of punch-ups over the years, but one debate, in the field of biology, has become notorious for its intensity. Over the last twenty years, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould have engaged in a savage battle over evolution that shows no signs of waning. Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, conceives of evolution as a struggle between gene lineages; Gould, who wrote Wonderful Life and Rocks of Ages, sees it as a struggle between organisms. For Dawkins, the principles of evolutionary biology apply just as well to humans as they do to all living creatures; for Gould, however, this sociobiology is not just ill-motivated but wrong, and dangerous. Dawkins' views have been caricatured, and the man painted as a crazed reductionist, shrinking all the variety and complexity of life down to a struggle for existence between blind and selfish genes. Gould, too, has been falsely represented by creationists as rejecting the fundamental principles of Darwinism itself." "Kim Sterelny moves beyond caricature to expose the real differences between the conceptions of evolution of these two leading scientists. He shows that the conflict extends beyond evolution to their very beliefs in science itself; and, in Gould's case, to domains in which science plays no role at all."--Jacket.

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Samuel N.C. Lieu

The study of Manichaeism, the first Gnostic world religion, has made major advances in the last few decades thanks to the continuing discovery and decipherment of genuine Manichaean texts from Egypt and Central Asia. This work brings together a number of major articles by the author published between 1981 and 1992 on the history of the sect in Mesopotamia and the Roman Empire. The studies have all been up-dated in the light of newly published material. It is hoped that a second collection will contain the author's studies on Manichaeism in Central Asia and China.