An evolution primer
March 6, 2015 7:39 PM Subscribe
Say you had a religious education, and were never taught the first thing about evolution. Now you're no longer religious. How would you learn what you'd missed?
I'm thinking books would be a good place to start, but I'm open to other options.
Some guidance on what would help:
I'm thinking books would be a good place to start, but I'm open to other options.
Some guidance on what would help:
- I'm not looking for sources that try to convince the faithful that evolution is true. The question at issue isn't whether evolution is true, but what it *is* in the first place.
- Assume that someone who didn't learn about evolution also didn't learn much other science. Something aimed at laymen would be best, the less intimidating the better.
- Ideally, this would provide a bit of background on many different aspects of evolution: what natural selection means, how inheritance works, what genes are, where humans came from, etc. Books like "The Selfish Gene" or "The Red Queen" that focus on one area of evolution might be too specific.
Khan Academy, a free educational site, has a course on heredity and evolution which would likely be geared toward teaching students the material from scratch. I haven't looked at that material in particular but I know in general Khan Academy does good stuff.
posted by NMcCoy at 7:55 PM on March 6, 2015
posted by NMcCoy at 7:55 PM on March 6, 2015
I asked this question many years ago and was aimed at this book by Carl Zimmer.
posted by jeather at 7:56 PM on March 6, 2015
posted by jeather at 7:56 PM on March 6, 2015
Carl Zimmer's book is a good one. But actually, it's worth beginning with the first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Darwin had to make the case for descent with modification by natural selection to a skeptical audience, so he mustered his evidence carefully.
Darwin didn't understand heredity, though—at least, not in the sense of having a theory to explain it. That came later. More recent works are useful there.
Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True is another good modern book on the subject.
posted by brianogilvie at 8:10 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
Darwin didn't understand heredity, though—at least, not in the sense of having a theory to explain it. That came later. More recent works are useful there.
Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True is another good modern book on the subject.
posted by brianogilvie at 8:10 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
In my twenties I borrowed my girlfriend's teenage brother's high school genetics textbook.
Although if you didn't get much other science, maybe skimming through basic physics, chemistry, and biology would be a better place to start. Maybe geology too; the further back in the past you get, the more it comes into play. Like the recently-discovered role of the Siberian Traps in one of the pre-historic mass extinctions!
P.S.: Whoa, I just noticed how low your user number is. You should be teaching us about ancient happenings, around here at least. Fourteen years between joining and your first AskMe, that's got to be some kind of record! Congratulations!
posted by XMLicious at 8:50 PM on March 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
Although if you didn't get much other science, maybe skimming through basic physics, chemistry, and biology would be a better place to start. Maybe geology too; the further back in the past you get, the more it comes into play. Like the recently-discovered role of the Siberian Traps in one of the pre-historic mass extinctions!
P.S.: Whoa, I just noticed how low your user number is. You should be teaching us about ancient happenings, around here at least. Fourteen years between joining and your first AskMe, that's got to be some kind of record! Congratulations!
posted by XMLicious at 8:50 PM on March 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
I was basically in that situation once upon a time, and reading Origin of the Species was really eye opening. Darwin builds his case so carefully and so thoroughly that I think it still works as a good introduction to what evolution is. It's remarkably clear and persuasive.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:09 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:09 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
Y'know what also occurs to me: you could just go somewhere like PubMed Central, find a full-text published scientific paper, and slowly read through it, referring back to all of these other resources to do lookups when you come across things you don't understand. I like learning that way sometimes.
(Though it's not like I fully understand what's discussed in the paper at the end, it can just connect everything to a topic I'm interested in at the moment; and I find I need to circle back and go through educational tests to really flesh out my understanding. I just like to precede that with this sort of intellectual safari beforehand, to get the lay of the land.)
posted by XMLicious at 9:16 PM on March 6, 2015
(Though it's not like I fully understand what's discussed in the paper at the end, it can just connect everything to a topic I'm interested in at the moment; and I find I need to circle back and go through educational tests to really flesh out my understanding. I just like to precede that with this sort of intellectual safari beforehand, to get the lay of the land.)
posted by XMLicious at 9:16 PM on March 6, 2015
Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True is good as well. It does rebut creationist arguments, but it's not argumentative, and it mostly just goes through different types of evidence for evolution.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:17 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:17 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
Understanding Evolution gets 2 million hits a month. Not a fancy site, but good info.
posted by Toddles at 9:23 PM on March 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Toddles at 9:23 PM on March 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
These are all about learning the details of how things have evolved and how heredity works. If I had never heard of evolution, I would want to first know what it is. So it's a scientific theory. A scientific theory is a set of interrelated causal postulates. Here are are the postulates of evolution.
1. Various characteristics of living organisms are passed on by heredity.
2. Sometimes random mutations occur.
3. Some of these random mutations make it more likely that an individual in a particular environment will survive to reproduce (or reproduce more), some will make it less likely, and some will have no effect.
The rest follows inevitably from those three postulates. So if I were new to the idea of evolution and wanted to go deeper, I would probably organize my learning around those postulates: 1. Learn how heredity works. 2. Learn about mutations. 3. Learn about how different characteristics make an organism more or less adapted (meaning likely to reproduce).
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:25 PM on March 6, 2015
1. Various characteristics of living organisms are passed on by heredity.
2. Sometimes random mutations occur.
3. Some of these random mutations make it more likely that an individual in a particular environment will survive to reproduce (or reproduce more), some will make it less likely, and some will have no effect.
The rest follows inevitably from those three postulates. So if I were new to the idea of evolution and wanted to go deeper, I would probably organize my learning around those postulates: 1. Learn how heredity works. 2. Learn about mutations. 3. Learn about how different characteristics make an organism more or less adapted (meaning likely to reproduce).
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:25 PM on March 6, 2015
Just read these three pages (155-157) in Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works.
posted by Noumenon at 9:34 PM on March 6, 2015
posted by Noumenon at 9:34 PM on March 6, 2015
Let me reiterate the recommendations for The Origin of Species. It's a remarkably readable book. It conveys the arguments for evolution and addresses many of the common arguments against it.
You can then read one of the modern books on genetics to understand the mechanics behind evolution.
posted by monotreme at 10:42 PM on March 6, 2015
You can then read one of the modern books on genetics to understand the mechanics behind evolution.
posted by monotreme at 10:42 PM on March 6, 2015
You don't actually need a book to understand the basic ideas behind evolution. They fit in a few paragraphs.
The first idea is that no living thing is exactly like its parents. Offspring always display some variation in colour, size, speed, problem-solving ability and so forth.
The second idea is that because of this variation, some living things are more suited to the world they find themselves born into than their siblings and cousins are. When times are really tough and competition is intense, this can make the difference between surviving to reproductive age and not.
The third idea is that any given living thing's direct offspring will tend to resemble it rather more closely than they resemble its more distant relatives.
The consequence of these three ideas is that over time, living things that fit their habitat well are more likely to reproduce than living things that fit it less well, which makes their characteristics more likely to persist; and that as the places living things inhabit change over time, the living things that persist in any given place will be the ones whose characteristics, statistically speaking, fit it best.
That consequence is evolution, and the process that drives it is reproduction under selective pressure.
The final piece of the puzzle, and the one that the religiously trained mind is likely to have the most trouble coming to grips with, is that the whole system of biology inside which the first three ideas operate is tremendously, mind-manglingly old; old enough to accommodate easily an enormous panoply of ecosystems consisting of living things not found alive anywhere today.
And yet everything alive today is the offspring of parents alive before it; and those parents are themselves the offspring of parents alive before them; and that simple fact, run back and back and back and back and back over literally incomprehensible numbers of generations, is enough to account for everything that lives today and everything that has ever lived.
All the rest is evidence-gathering, family trees and bookkeeping.
posted by flabdablet at 11:47 PM on March 6, 2015 [7 favorites]
The first idea is that no living thing is exactly like its parents. Offspring always display some variation in colour, size, speed, problem-solving ability and so forth.
The second idea is that because of this variation, some living things are more suited to the world they find themselves born into than their siblings and cousins are. When times are really tough and competition is intense, this can make the difference between surviving to reproductive age and not.
The third idea is that any given living thing's direct offspring will tend to resemble it rather more closely than they resemble its more distant relatives.
The consequence of these three ideas is that over time, living things that fit their habitat well are more likely to reproduce than living things that fit it less well, which makes their characteristics more likely to persist; and that as the places living things inhabit change over time, the living things that persist in any given place will be the ones whose characteristics, statistically speaking, fit it best.
That consequence is evolution, and the process that drives it is reproduction under selective pressure.
The final piece of the puzzle, and the one that the religiously trained mind is likely to have the most trouble coming to grips with, is that the whole system of biology inside which the first three ideas operate is tremendously, mind-manglingly old; old enough to accommodate easily an enormous panoply of ecosystems consisting of living things not found alive anywhere today.
And yet everything alive today is the offspring of parents alive before it; and those parents are themselves the offspring of parents alive before them; and that simple fact, run back and back and back and back and back over literally incomprehensible numbers of generations, is enough to account for everything that lives today and everything that has ever lived.
All the rest is evidence-gathering, family trees and bookkeeping.
posted by flabdablet at 11:47 PM on March 6, 2015 [7 favorites]
Bill Nye has a book on the subject.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:19 AM on March 7, 2015
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:19 AM on March 7, 2015
AskMe helped me answer this question 10 years ago.
Personally I found Becoming Human very helpful, along with documentaries and books aimed at kids in grade 6-9.
posted by heatherann at 4:41 AM on March 7, 2015
Personally I found Becoming Human very helpful, along with documentaries and books aimed at kids in grade 6-9.
posted by heatherann at 4:41 AM on March 7, 2015
Please note that what flabdablet and others are describing is actually natural selection, which is only one of the ways that evolution occurs. It is important to understand natural selection to understand evolution, because much of life on earth is shaped by adaptation to the environment, but it is also important to understand genetic drift, the idea that even without selective pressures, random change happens over time simply and only because random change happens over time. In other words, not every thing we see around us is adaptation due to a specific selective pressure--some of it happened for no reason it all.
I adore On the Origin of Species, and think it is an excellent place to start. But don't stop there. A modern understanding of evolution is more complicated and more fascinating. Jerry Coyne's book is great, as are Carl Zimmer's. And don't forget Stephen Jay Gould.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:11 AM on March 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
I adore On the Origin of Species, and think it is an excellent place to start. But don't stop there. A modern understanding of evolution is more complicated and more fascinating. Jerry Coyne's book is great, as are Carl Zimmer's. And don't forget Stephen Jay Gould.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:11 AM on March 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Best answer: These folks have a very nice series of simple animated videos about evolution and natural selection: Stated Clearly
posted by chr1sb0y at 5:22 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by chr1sb0y at 5:22 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
If starting from scratch with the 19th century prose of Origin is too daunting, The Reluctant Mister Darwin by David Quammen is a pretty great book that explores how Darwin came up with his ideas and actually wrote the book and developed his theory of Natural Selection.
I particularly like Jerry Coyne's book; I'd also recommend Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin for a different look at the process of human evolution.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:24 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
I particularly like Jerry Coyne's book; I'd also recommend Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin for a different look at the process of human evolution.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:24 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
On a similar journey, I found three resources most useful:
A standard biology textbook. Campbell and Reece is well-written and understandable and has two sections on evolution which will answer basically all of your questions accurately and thoroughly. Used copies of the 8th Edition, from 2008, are available in large volume for under $10. It might seem intimidating to start with a textbook, but the chapters on evolution in Campbell and Reece are as good as any popularization you'll find.
The Cartoon Guide to Genetics is a good introduction to the nuts and bolts of inheritance and genes. It's narrowly focused, but it's an easy-enough read that it'll enhance your understanding of whatever else you read.
David Attenborough's 1979 documentary series Life on Earth tells the story of evolution on earth over 13 episodes. It's an excellent series despite its age, and, unlike his more recent documentary series, it will never be re-broadcast by Christian networks as an example of God's Wonderful Works. It is all about evolution, and very up-front about that fact. Plus, it's entertaining watching if you like geeking out on this sort of thing.
posted by clawsoon at 6:32 AM on March 7, 2015
A standard biology textbook. Campbell and Reece is well-written and understandable and has two sections on evolution which will answer basically all of your questions accurately and thoroughly. Used copies of the 8th Edition, from 2008, are available in large volume for under $10. It might seem intimidating to start with a textbook, but the chapters on evolution in Campbell and Reece are as good as any popularization you'll find.
The Cartoon Guide to Genetics is a good introduction to the nuts and bolts of inheritance and genes. It's narrowly focused, but it's an easy-enough read that it'll enhance your understanding of whatever else you read.
David Attenborough's 1979 documentary series Life on Earth tells the story of evolution on earth over 13 episodes. It's an excellent series despite its age, and, unlike his more recent documentary series, it will never be re-broadcast by Christian networks as an example of God's Wonderful Works. It is all about evolution, and very up-front about that fact. Plus, it's entertaining watching if you like geeking out on this sort of thing.
posted by clawsoon at 6:32 AM on March 7, 2015
One book that hasn't been mentioned yet on modern developments is Sean B. Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful, which is a lay introduction to evolutionary development.
posted by brianogilvie at 9:17 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by brianogilvie at 9:17 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
The Selfish Gene is kind of heavy (though very good). The Ancestor's Tale, also by Richard Dawkins is much more accessible and very exciting. It's not so much about convincing anyone of the veracity of evolution. It's more of a narrative about our origins with many digressions into strange and fascinating paths other species took to evolve into their current forms.
posted by Loudmax at 12:29 PM on March 7, 2015
posted by Loudmax at 12:29 PM on March 7, 2015
Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett is fantastic, and I reread it periodically.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:49 PM on March 8, 2015
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:49 PM on March 8, 2015
Response by poster: We ended up going with Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, a documentary suggested by others. Thanks to everyone who suggested video sources, that was a great idea that I hadn't considered.
posted by vasi at 12:24 PM on April 6, 2015
posted by vasi at 12:24 PM on April 6, 2015
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