What's a good, up-to-date book on evolution?

[gopunk]

i have a really rough idea of what they theory is and such, but i'd really like to read more. can anyone recommend an easy-to-follow up-to-date book on this subject? like one that talks about how it has evolved from darwin's conception into what it is today, and what theories have been added and disproved along the way?

thanks!



please nobody turn this into a evolution vs creationism thread, i just want some book recommendations, thanks.

 

[Syringer]

The Bible.

Oh wait..you said up to date

 

[fyleow]

Origin of Species

 

[glen]

The best writers on the subject are Richard Dawkins, my personal favorite, and Stephen Jay Gould .

 

[glen]

ripped off from Amazon.com

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 sign 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.

 

[glen]

Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: glen
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene

great, thanks! i just put in a request for my library to get it (from another location)

 

[glen]

Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

 

[glen]

I like and agree with Dawkins, so it is hard for me to recomend one of Stephen Jay Gould's books.
I simply don't know which one is the best.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: glen
I like and agree with Dawkins, so it is hard for me to recomend one of Stephen Jay Gould's books.
I simply don't know which one is the best.

just looking at the amazon reviews, it seems like dawkins is more accessible to someone without a background in biology, while gould is a little harder... i think i'll start off with the two dawkins books you recommended. thanks!

 

[theNEOone]

are you looking for an in depth look, or do you want something brief yet extremely direct and to the point? there's a picture/graphic based book called darwin for beginners. it's writen intelligently and is not not childish in the least bit. PM me for a cheap and easy way to get your hands on it.

 

[glen]

The Blind Watch Maker is one with some interesting theological conjecture.
One of the old "proofs" for the existance of God was the so called Watch Maker Theory.
If you find a watch in the woods, that is proof of a watch Maker.
You find complex life forms in the world, that is evidence of God.
Dawkins shows how simple genes work together to form an enourmously complex creatures.
It is so brilliant I could cry.
Dawkins shows that complex creatures really are NOT proof of God's existance.

 

[theNEOone]

Originally posted by: glen
The Blind Watch Maker is one with some interesting theological conjecture.
One of the old "proofs" for the existance of God was the so called Watch Maker Theory.
If you find a watch in the woods, that is proof of a watch Maker.
You find complex life forms in the world, that is evidence of God.
Dawkins shows how simple genes work together to form an enourmously complex creatures.
It is so brilliant I could cry.
Dawkins shows that complex creatures really are NOT proof of God's existance.

it seems that one of the problems w/ how dawkins addresses the watchmaker theory is that it debunks how humans view god. if god's work was not "directed" towards any particular goals, then debunking the watch maker theory wouldn't do any good in disproving the existence of god. basically what i'm saying is that humans are imperfect, and our beliefs are (in large part) imperfect. so it isn't unreasonable to assume that our view of god (if there is such a being) is skewed from the truth. so,

humans think that god = A. we also believe that the only way C exists, is because A made it. however, dawkins shows that there is no way C could have come about through A. therefore A does not exist. well what if god was never A to begin with? what if he was X? then showing that A does not exist, doesn't mean that god doesn't exist. another problem arises. what if god never made C. perhaps god made B (the universe and it's laws, for example), and then through it's own natural workings, B gave rise to C?

i haven't read dawkins' work, so he might address this.

i'm agnostic, and i accept evolution as a universal truth, btw.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: glen
The Blind Watch Maker is one with some interesting theological conjecture.
One of the old "proofs" for the existance of God was the so called Watch Maker Theory.
If you find a watch in the woods, that is proof of a watch Maker.
You find complex life forms in the world, that is evidence of God.
Dawkins shows how simple genes work together to form an enourmously complex creatures.
It is so brilliant I could cry.
Dawkins shows that complex creatures really are NOT proof of God's existance.

but does he show absolute proof that they evolved other than human logic?

i thought for sure that both God and evolution were beliefs and neither proved, but i dont watch science news alot...after all, we had to kick iraq's ass, thats all that was on cnn

 

[glen]

I have read it.
I generally agree that complex life does not prove that God has an active hand in evolution, which is basically what Dawkins is saying.
Now, that being said, that is nto the scope of the book.
Mainly, he explains the macro mechanics of evolution.

 

[glen]

Ok, imagine you show a pimative tribe a video game.
To them it will seem as though a being is runnign it.
In reality, it is simply ones and zeros.

Evolution is incredibly complex, and people sometime site it as "proof" of god's existance.
Dawkins point isn't so much saying God doesn't exist as his is simply saying evolution it is just all ones and zeros.

My point is:
Doom3, therefore, Carmack is a God.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Ok, imagine you show a pimative tribe a video game.
To them it will seem as though a being is runnign it.
In reality, it is simply ones and zeros.

actually that's an argument for "intelligent design" since the 0's and 1's didin't spontaneously evolve themselves into a video game.

In this context Carmack is god

 

[DaveSimmons]

A better (software) example of evolution is Conway's Life simulator where you take random pixels and set up simple rules for which survive and which don't. Given the right initial random pixels you can evolve moving shapes that look like living creatures.