Pattern of Evolution - Hardcover

Eldredge, Niles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0716730464 ISBN 13: 9780716730460

Publisher: W H Freeman & Co, 1998

Synopsis

Attempts to take the first steps towards a fuller understanding of the process of evolution. Complaining that simple reliance on the competition to reproduce fails to explain cross-genealogical patterns in the history of life, the author looks at the history of evolutionary thought and argues that geological and other events are intricately linked to how species developed over time. Finally, he contends that his insight shows how science itself needs to reintegrate for a full understanding of the universe around us. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

NILES ELDREDGE is a Curator in the Department of Invertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, where he has worked as an active research paleontologist since 1969. He is the author of 20 books and more than 200 research papers, including several with Stephen Jay Gould announcing the theory of punctuated equilibria. He speaks regularly on aspects of evolutionary theory and biodiversity issues.

Reviews

In these rich, dense, stimulating essays, Eldredge (Life in the Balance), curator of invertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, improvises on Darwin by sketching a grand, sweeping, ecologically based theory that links biological evolution to physical events in the earth's history. He maintains that the driving force of evolution is global mass extinctions of a majority of species, which paves the way for the advent of new species that inhabit and rebuild disrupted ecosystems. What caused these extinctions? Eldredge goes beyond the usual culprits?rapid global cooling, periodic ice ages, catastrophic meteor collisions?by also citing plate tectonics, shifts in the earth's crust causing dramatic changes in oceanic circulation and global climate. In a sense, his theory fleshes out the notion of "punctuated equilibria" he developed with Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould, which holds that evolution proceeds episodically, in relatively short spasms that "punctuate" monotonous eons where nothing much happens. Mixing scientific adventure (the author's search for the Taita falcon, one of the world's rarest birds, near Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe) and freewheeling speculations on geology, paleontology, genetics and evolutionary theory, these elegant essays explore how the recognition of patterns in nature?by Darwin, Linnaeus, geologist James Hutton, continental-drift pioneer Alfred Wegener and others?often provides the key to scientific breakthroughs. A deep probe of how scientific advances emerge, the book touches upon current controversies as well, including the "snowball earth" theory of CIT geologist Joseph Kirschvink, which asserts that massive glaciers invaded the tropics just 600 million years ago, and that the earth's crust and upper mantle rotated as a shell 90 degrees, stirring the evolutionary pot. Author tour; rights: the Spieler Agency.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0716730464
• ISBN 13: 9780716730460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 219