HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS: CARL ZIMMER 5-23-22

ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY
HUMANIST GALAXY
OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS
CARL ZIMMER
May 23, 2022

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EVOLUTION:
The Triumph of an Idea
by Carl Zimmer.
HarperCollins, 2001
(i-xx, 364 pages)

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evolutionary theory

"creation science."

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"modern synthesis"

"Cambrian explosion"

"popular science"

BOOK OUTLINE
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note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages

INTRODUCTION — Stephen Jay Gould (ix-xiv)

FOREWORD — Richard Hutton (xv-vvii)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (xix-xx)

PART 1 — SLOW VICTORY — Darwin and the Rise of Darwinism (1-97)

1) DARWIN AND THE BEAGLE (3-25)

2) "LIKE CONFESSING A MURDER" — The Origin of Origin of Species (27-55)

3) DEEP TIME DISCOVERED — Putting Dates to the History of Life (57-71)

4) WITNESSING CHANGE — Genes, Natural Selection, and Evolution in Action (73-97)

PART 2 — CREATION AND DESTRUCTION (99-186))

5) ROOTING THE TREE OF LIFE — From Life's Dawn to the Age of Microbes (101-115)

6) THE ACCIDENTAL TOOL KIT — Chance and Constraints in Animal Evolution (117-141)

7) EXTINCTION — How Life Ends and Begins Again (143-186)

PART 3 — EVOLUTION'S DANCE (187-256)

8) COEVOLUTION — Weaving the Web of Life (189-344)

9) DOCTOR DARWIN — Disease in the Age of Evolutionary Medicine (211-281)

10) PASSION'S LOGIC — The Evolution of Sex (229-256)

PART 4 — HUMANITY'S PLACE IN EVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION'S PLACE IN HUMANITY (257-344)

11) THE GOSSIPING APE — The Social Roots of Human Evolution (259-291)

12) MODERN LIFE, 50,000 B.C. — The Dawn of Us (293-311)

13) WHAT ABOUT GOD? (313-344)

FURTHER READING (345-352)

INDEX (353-383)

IMAGE CREDITS (384)

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AUTHOR NOTE, SUMMARY,
AND BOOK DESCRIPTION
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AUTHOR NOTE = Carl Zimmer is a former senior editor at Discover, he writes a regular column on evolution for Natural History. He also contributes articles to magazines such as National Geographic, Audubon, and Science. He lives in New York City.

SUMMARY = In this dazzling companion volume to a seven-part SBS series (airing November 2002), an award winning journalist collaborates with leading scholars in the life sciences to tell the compelling story of the theory of evolution starting with Darwin's seminal insights and ending with the cutting-edge developments in 20th century science that have confirmed and extended his findings. (Stephen Jay Gould, Sarah Hrdy, Mary-Claire King, Steven Pinker, etc.)

BOOK DESCRIPTION = In this remarkable book, a rich and up-to-date view of evolution is presented that explores the far-reaching implications of Darwin's theory. In a world where species loss is escalating, there are growing pressures on food production and energy resources, and lethal antibiotic-resistant diseases are running rampant, evolution becomes a way of grappling both with our planet's past and it's future.

At a time when controversies surrounding creationism and education are bursting into public consciousness, this book's emphasis on the power, significance, and relevance of evolution will make it a catalyst for public debate. The publication of this book, and the series, marks a turning point in the 150-year debate. The book will be an indispensable asset to any serious reader with an interest in the life sciences, a passion for truth in education, or a concern for the future of the planet.

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EDITORIAL BOOK REVIEWS
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PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY REVIEW = This volume is the companion piece for an eight-hour PBS documentary of the same name, scheduled to be aired in September. Science writer Zimmer (At the Water's Edge) does a superb job of providing a sweeping overview of most of the topics critical to understanding evolution, presenting his material from both a historical and a topical perspective. He summarizes the changing scientific views of geology and genetics, for example, while discussing the implications modern evolutionary theory might have for agriculture and medicine.

With chapters dealing with difficult and often controversial subjects including Charles Darwin's life and his struggle to bring his concept of evolution before the public; the evolution of sex; patterns of human evolution and the importance of language in the rise of humans; the role humans have played and continue to play in the extinction of species; and the fallacies of "creation science" it is not surprising that a great deal of information is either glossed over or omitted entirely. Yet the writing is clear and concise, the text is carefully presented (with b&w and color illustrations throughout) and a respectably substantial Stephen Jay Gould introduction starts things off nicely. (Oct.) Forecast: The series should certainly move units on its own, particularly via the PBS Web site. But a seven-city author tour, 25-city radio campaign, display easels and other promotional gambits will help the book and the series considerably. Though it may not be a breakout title, very respectable sales can be expected among PBS regulars.

BOOKLIST REVIEW = This book is part of a multimedia package the highlight of which is a PBS Nova series that will air this month. Zimmer's synthesis of evolution is a valuable introduction to the subject, encompassing background on the theory's formulation, the "modern synthesis" of its mechanisms, and a narrative of the history of life. Because of its tie-in to the PBS series, it will no doubt be popular, and it well deserves an effort to bring it to wide attention (i.e., display it--don't just shelve it). One senses Zimmer's and, in the introduction, Stephen Jay Gould's exasperation with having to refute yet again the criticisms of evolution and reiterate the deficiencies of creationism. No surprise to readers of his creepy but excellent Parasite Rex! [BKL Ag 00], the text moves smartly along, and Zimmer's expository conciseness is a high point of the text. He is also commendably clear in explaining the background of the Cambrian "explosion" a half billion years ago and the highlights of the fossil record since, ultimately encompassing human origins. Popular science that will truly be popular. – Gilbert Taylor.

LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = Sneak preview — This work by science journalist Zimmer accompanies an exciting new seven-part PBS TV series.

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EXCERPTS
Chapter One: Darwin and the Beagle
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In late October 1831 a 90-foot coaster named HMS Beagle lay docked at Plymouth, England. Its crew scrambled about it like termites in a nest. They were packing the ship as tightly as they could for a voyage around the world, one that would last five years. They rolled barrels of flour and rum into the hold and crammed the deck with wooden boxes that contained experimental clocks resting on beds of sawdust. The Beagle's voyage was a scientific one: its crew would be testing the clocks for the British navy, which depended on precise timekeeping to navigate. Exquisitely detailed maps would be drawn on the voyage as well, so mahogany lockers were installed in the poop cabin and packed with navigational charts. The crew replaced the ship's 10 steel cannons with brass ones so that not even the slightest interference could confuse the Beagle's compasses.

Amid the flurry of preparations, a 22-year-old man picked his way. He moved awkwardly around the ship, not only because his 6-foot frame was oversized for the cramped quarters, but also because he felt profoundly out of place. He had no official position on the ship, having been invited to keep the captain company during the voyage and act as an unofficial naturalist. It was usually up to a ship's surgeon to act as the naturalist for a voyage, but this awkward young man had no such practical skill. He was a medical school dropout who, for want of any other respectable line of work, was considering a career as a country parson when the voyage was over. Once he had stowed away his preserving jars, his microscope, and the rest of his equipment in the poop cabin, he had nothing more to do. He tried helping the assistant surveyor calibrate some of the timepieces, but he didn't even know enough math to do the most basic calculations.

The name of this awkward young man was Charles Darwin. By the time the Beagle returned to England five years later, he would be transformed into one of Britain's most promising young scientists. And out of his experiences on the journey, he would discover the single most important idea in the history of biology, one that would permanently alter humanity's perception of its place in the natural order. From clues that he collected aboard the Beagle, Darwin would show that nature had not been created in exactly the form it takes today. Life evolves: it changes gradually but perpetually over vast gulfs of time, driven through those changes thanks to the laws of heredity, without any need of direct divine intervention. And humans, far from being the pinnacle and destiny of God's creation, were but a single species among many, another product of evolution.

Darwin would send Victorian England into a crisis with his theory, but he would offer an alternative view of life that has turned out to have a grandeur of its own. It is clear today that evolution connects us to the dawn of Earth, to showers of comets and death-winds of stars. It produced the crops we eat and now helps insects destroy them. It illuminates the mysteries of medicine, such as how mindless bacteria can outwit the best minds in science. It holds a warning for those who would take from Earth without limits; it reveals how our minds were assembled among lonely bands of apes. We may still struggle with what evolution says about our place in the universe, but that universe is all the more remarkable.

The Beagle is remembered today only because of Darwin's experience on board the ship. But if you tried to tell that to the sailors rolling barrels aboard they might have laughed without even a glance at the young man who was pretending to know what he was doing.

"My chief employment," Darwin wrote to his family from Plymouth, "is to go on board the Beagle and try to look as much like a sailor as ever I can. I have no evidence of having taken in man, woman or child."

IN SEARCH OF BEETLES AND RESPECTABILITY

Darwin had grown up along the banks of the Severn River in Shropshire, collecting pebbles and birds, completely unaware of the fortunes that made his life pleasant. His mother, Susannah, came from the wealthy Wedgwood family, which made china of the same name. Although his father, Robert, came from less wealthy stock, he built up a fortune of his own by working as a doctor and discreetly lending money to his patients. He eventually became rich enough to build his family a large house, the Mount, on a hillside overlooking the Severn.

Charles and his older brother Erasmus had the close, practically telepathic connection that brothers sometimes have. As teenagers they built themselves a laboratory at the Mount where they would dabble in chemicals and crystals. When Charles was 16, Erasmus went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Their father sent Charles along with him to keep Erasmus company, and ultimately to go to medical school as well. Charles was happy to tag along, for the company of his brother and for the adventure.

When they arrived in Edinburgh, Charles and Erasmus were shocked by the squalor and spectacle of the city. These two boys, raised in the genteel countryside where Jane Austen set her novels, encountered slums for the first time. Politics raged around them as Scottish nationalists, Jacobites, and Calvinists jostled over church and country. At Edinburgh University they faced a rabble of rough students shouting and shooting off pistols in the middle of lectures.

Charles and Erasmus recoiled into each other's company, spending their time talking together, walking along the shore, reading newspapers, and going to the theater. Charles realized very quickly that he hated medicine. The lectures were dreary, the dissected corpses a nightmare, the operations— often amputations without anesthesia — terrifying. He kept himself busy with natural history. But although Charles knew that he could not become a doctor, he had no appetite for standing up to his father. When he came home to the Mount for the summer, he avoided bringing up the matter, spending his days instead shooting birds andlearning how to stuff them. He would continue to avoid confrontations for the rest of his life.

Over the summer Robert Darwin decided to send Erasmus to London to continue his studies. Charles returned to Edinburgh alone in October I826, with only his natural history to distract him from a life he had come to hate.

He became friends with naturalists in Edinburgh, including a zoologist named Robert Grant, who took him under his Wing. Grant had been trained as a doctor but had given up his practice to become one of the country's great zoologists, studying sea pens, sponges, and other creatures that scientists of the time still knew almost nothing about. Grant proved a good mentor. “He was dry and formal in manner, but with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust,” Darwin later wrote. He showed Darwin the tricks of zoology: how, for instance, to dissect marine creatures in seawater under a microscope. And Darwin in turn proved to be a bright apprentice; he was the first person ever to see the male and female sex cells of seaweed dance together.

In I828, at the end of his second year in Edinburgh, Darwin went back home to the Mount. He could no longer avoid his father, and he finally confessed that he could not become a doctor. Robert Darwin was furious. He told Charles, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching and you will be a disgrace, to yourself and all your family.”

Robert was not an ogre of a father. His son would become a rich man, and Robert wanted him to be more than idly rich. If Charles would not become a doctor, Robert could imagine only one other respectable profession that was still left open to his youngest son: the clergy. The Darwins were not particularly religious — Robert Darwin even privately doubted whether God existed — but in Britain religion brought security and respectability. Although Darwin had never felt any great passion for the church, he agreed, and the following year he went to Cambridge for a degree in theology.

Darwin did not turn out to be a hardworking student; he was less likely to be studying the Bible than hunting for beetles. He searched for the insects on the heaths and in the forests; to find the rarest species, he hired a laborer to scrape moss off trees and muck out the bottom of barges filled with reeds. And as for the future, Darwin wasn't dreaming of a parsonage but of leaving England altogether.

He read about Alexander von Humboldt’s travels through the Brazilian rain forest and over the Andes, and he wanted to travel as well, to discover something about how nature worked. Humboldt had praised the Canary Islands, with their dense lowland jungles and rugged volcanic flanks, and Darwin began scheming an expedition. He found a Cambridge tutor, Marmaduke Ramsay, who was willing to travel to the Canaries with him. He honed his skills at geology by working as an assistant to the Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick for several weeks in Wales. When he returned from the expedition, ready to start making serious preparations for his trip to the Canary Islands, he got a message. Marmaduke Ramsay was dead.

Darwin was devastated. He left Cambridge and traveled home to the Mount with no idea what to do. But when he arrived, there was a letter from another of his professors at Cambridge, John Stevens Henslow. Henslow wanted to know whether Darwin cared to take a trip around the world.

=========================== lN SEARCH OF BEETLES AND RESPECTABILITY Darwin had grown up along the banks of the 5-;-"tern River in Shropshire, collecting pebbles and birds, completely unaware of the fortunes iia: made his life pleasant. His mother, Susan- nah. came from the wealthy Wedgwood family, which made china of the same name. Although 3:5 father, Robert, came from less wealthy stock, he built up a fortune of his own by working as a doctor and discreetly lending money to his patients. He eventually became rich enough to ':1iild his family a large house, the Mount, on a hillside overlooking the Severn. Charles and his older brother Erasmus had ‘lie close, practically telepathic connection that brothers sometimes have. As teenagers they built ?iemselves a laboratory at the Mount where they -.=:ould dabble in chemicals and crystals. When Charles was 16, Erasmus went :0 Edinburgh to study medicine. Their father sent Charles along with him to keep Erasmus company, and ultimately to go to medical school as well. Charles was happy to tag along, for the company of his brother and for the adventure. When they arrived in Edinburgh, Charles and Erasmus were shocked by the squalor and spectacle of the city. These two boys, raised in the genteel country- side where Iane Austen set her novels, encountered slums for the ?rst time. Politics raged around them as Scottish nationalists, Iacobites, and Calvinists jos- tled over church and country. At Edinburgh University they faced a rabble of rough students shouting and shooting off pistols in the middle of lectures. Charles and Erasmus recoiled into each other’s company, spending their time talking together, walking along the shore, reading newspapers, and going to the theater. Charles realized very quickly that he hated medicine. The lectures were dreary, the dissected corpses a nightmare, the operations—often amputations without anesthesia——terrifying. He kept himself busy with natural history. But although Charles knew that he could not become a doctor, he had no appetite for standing up to his father. When he came home to the Mount for the summer, he avoided bringing up the matter, spending his days instead shooting birds and learning how to stuff them. He would continue to avoid confrontations for the rest of his life. Over the summer Robert Darwin decided to send Erasmus to London to continue his studies. Charles returned to Edinburgh alone in October I826, with only his natural history to distract him from a life he had come to hate. =========================== He became friends with naturalists in Edinburgh, including a zoologist named Robert Grant, who took him under his Wing. Grant had been trained as a doc- tor but had given up his practice to become one of the country's great zoolo- gists, studying sea pens, sponges, and other creatures that scientists of the time still knew almost nothing about. Grant proved a good mentor. “He was dry and formal in manner, but with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust,” Darwin later wrote. He showed Darwin the tricks of zoology: how, for instance, to dissect marine creatures in seawater under a microscope. And Darwin in turn proved to be a bright apprentice; he was the ?rst person ever to see the male and female sex cells of seaweed dance together. In I828, at the end of his second year in Edinburgh, Darwin went back home to the Mount. He could no longer avoid his father, and he ?nally con- fessed that he couldn’t become a doctor. Robert Darwin was furious. He told Charles, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching and you will be a disgrace, to yourself and all your family.” Robert was not an ogre of a father. His son would become a rich man, and Robert wanted him to be more than idly rich. If Charles wouldn’t become a doctor, Robert could imagine only one other respectable profession that was still left open to his youngest son: the clergy. The Darwins were not particu- larly religi0us—Robert Darwin even privately doubted whether God existed— but in Britain religion brought security and respectability. Although Darwin had never felt any great passion for the church, he agreed, and the following year he went to Cambridge for a degree in theology. Darwin did not turn out to be a hardworking student; he was less likely to be studying the Bible than hunting for beetles. He searched for the insects on the heaths and in the forests; to ?nd the rarest species, he hired a laborer to scrape moss off trees and muck out the bottom of barges ?lled with reeds. And as for the future, Darwin wasn't dreaming of a parsonage but of leaving England altogether. He read about Alexander von Humboldt’s travels through the Brazilian rain forest and over the Andes, and he Wanted to travel as well, to discover something about how nature worked. Humboldt had praised the Canary Islands, with their dense lowland jungles and rugged volcanic ?anks, and Darwin began schem- ing an expedition. He found a Cambridge tutor, Marmaduke Ramsay, who was willing to travel to the Canaries with him. He honed his skills at geology by work- ing as an assistant to the Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick for several weeks in Wales. When he returned from the expedition, ready to start making seri- ous preparations for his trip to the Canary Islands, he got a message. Marma- duke Ramsay was dead. Darwin was devastated. He left Cambridge and traveled home to the Mount with no idea what to do. But when he arrived, there was a letter from another of his professors at Cambridge, Iohn Stevens Henslow. Henslow wanted to know whether Darwin cared to take a trip around the world. =========================== green separator

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