Mystery of Mysteries : Is Evolution a Social Construction

Ruse, Michael

ISBN 10: 067446706X / ISBN 13: 9780674467064

Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999

About this Item

First edition 1999, first printing, matching dates on the title and copyright pages. Published by Harvard University Press. Hardcover with DJ. Condition new, square tight and crisp book, no edgewear, corners not bumped, no markings of any kind, no names, no underlinings, no highlights, no bent pages, not a reminder. DJ new, bright and shiny, no tears, no chips, no edgewear, price not clipped. 8vo, 320 pages, illustrated with drawings and photographs, bibliography, index.

Seller Inventory # 014226

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mystery of Mysteries : Is Evolution a Social Construction
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067446706X
• ISBN 13: 9780674467064
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

With the recent Sokal hoax--the publication of a prominent physicist's pseudo-article in a leading journal of cultural studies--the status of science moved sharply from debate to dispute. Is science objective, a disinterested reflection of reality, as Karl Popper and his followers believed? Or is it subjective, a social construction, as Thomas Kuhn and his students maintained? Into the fray comes Mystery of Mysteries, an enlightening inquiry into the nature of science, using evolutionary theory as a case study.

Michael Ruse begins with such colorful luminaries as Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) and Julian Huxley (brother of novelist Aldous and grandson of T. H. Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog" ) and ends with the work of the English game theorist Geoffrey Parker--a microevolutionist who made his mark studying the mating strategies of dung flies--and the American paleontologist Jack Sepkoski, whose computer-generated models reconstruct mass extinctions and other macro events in life's history. Along the way Ruse considers two great popularizers of evolution, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, as well as two leaders in the field of evolutionary studies, Richard Lewontin and Edward O. Wilson, paying close attention to these figures' cultural commitments: Gould's transplanted Germanic idealism, Dawkins's male-dominated Oxbridge circle, Lewontin's Jewish background, and Wilson's southern childhood. Ruse explicates the role of metaphor and metavalues in evolutionary thought and draws significant conclusions about the cultural impregnation of science. Identifying strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the "science wars," he demonstrates that a resolution of the objective and subjective debate is nonetheless possible.

About the Author

Michael Ruse is the former Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Gifford Lecturer, and the author or editor of more than sixty books.