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The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma | 
| Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Category: EBooks
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $11.02
You Save: $23.98 (69%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 10583
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.8
ASIN: B0015GURT2
Publication Date: October 19, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
In the 150 years since Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has left a glaring gap in understanding how animals developed their astounding variety and complexity. The standard answer has been that small genetic mutations accumulate over time to produce wondrous innovations such as eyes and wings. Drawing on cutting-edge research across the spectrum of modern biology, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart demonstrate how this stock answer is woefully inadequate. Rather they offer an original solution to the longstanding puzzle of how small random genetic change can be converted into complex, useful innovations.
In a new theory they call “facilitated variation,” Kirschner and Gerhart elevate the individual organism from a passive target of natural selection to a central player in the 3-billion-year history of evolution. In clear, accessible language, the authors invite every reader to contemplate daring new ideas about evolution. By closing the major gap in Darwin’s theory Kirschner and Gerhart also provide a timely scientific rebuttal to modern critics of evolution who champion “intelligent design.”
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 This is excellent! August 26, 2008
This is an excellent introduction to the effect of epigenetics on evolution. I would recommend this book to anyone who is not familiar with epigenetics.
Evolution is plausible! May 2, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
The book purports to present a major new theory explaining the evolution of novel morphology, physiology, and behavior.
Only time will tell whether that claim works out, but for right now the book does present an interesting discussion suggesting that minor modifications of just a few core, biomolecular structures and processes are enough to account for a large part of biological "novelty." The authors imply that the task of producing the variety of life forms we see today was a lot easier than the superficial appearance of enormously varied and complex forms would suggest, and that there's no reason to doubt the ability of evolutionary processes to accomplish the task.
The authors' also discuss a couple of specific, creationist objections to evolution, including the concepts of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducible complexity (IC), but the discussion is very, very brief. I think a more cogent argument against many creationist arguments on both topics is implied on page 2, in the authors' explanation of their definition of the term "design." The authors use "design" to indicate functionality. Creationist arguments, on the other hand, flip-flop, using "design" to refer to both functionality and a purposeful act. Not distinguishing between those two radically different meanings is one of the glaring errors in creationist rhetoric about both CSI and IC.
Plausible Enough, Thank You! April 8, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
Most readers, I assume, would declare that Life is Plausible enough, as long as they haven't overspent their Visa cards. Obviously authors Kirschner and Gerhart must mean something else, but their literary gifts are not always equal to their scientific insights. This is difficult matter, made more difficult by somewhat obtuse writing. It took me weeks to read this book and fathom its particular content, and yet I'm giving the book all five stars because of the importance of its insghts.
A more informative title would be "The Plausibility of Evolution as an Explanation of the Diversity of Life." The most inveterate critics of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution point to the diversity of life forms and the implausibility that such diverse forms, each functionally adapted, could have evolved by random mutation, through minute increments of change, evn in the course of billions of years. Kirschner and Gerhart attempt to answer that objection with a new theory of evolution at the sub-cellular level, which they call "facilitated variation." Honestly, I think they're on to something, though I don't find their new synthesis so very different from the ideas implicit in Sean Carroll's notions of evo-devo -- evolutionary development. Rather than try to express the core ideas of facilitated evolution by myself, I'll give you the authors' own words:
The selection for a small number of conserved core processes versatile enough to be used in many different contextsto support the complexity of large multicellular organisms is a product of selection for physiological adaptability. As a side effect, core processes with high adaptability have a high capacity for weak linkage. Such processes are responsive to genetic changes of regulation. They have been used inmany different combinations at many different times and places in the organism's development and physiology, so that it is likely the processes capable of weak linkage pose little barrier to future use in different combinations, times, places, and amounts...
Much of the skepticism over the years about the capacity of random mutation or genetic reassortment to generate phenotypic change has arisen from the assumption that genetic changes must create very specific, multiple, complex phenotypic changes. Our view is that specificity and complexity are already built into the conserved processes, as is the propensity for regulatory coupling.
Well, there you have it, from roughly the middle of the book. If it makes crystalline sense to you, perhaps you don't need to read further. If it makes no sense at all, perhaps you'd better read something else. If it makes some sort of sense but you want a good deal more evidence and explication, then you might consider taking on the whole book.
The most fundamental idea here is that evolution MUST occur first at the level of molecules. Darwin was looking through the wrong end of the telescope by theorizing evolution of species, though in his time and place no other viewing point was available. Darwin observed evolution of whole organisms as "descent with modification," just as any orchid fancier, guppy breeder, or paleontologist can and must observe it. Then came the geneticists, who salvaged Darwinian evolution from the critics who demanded evidence of a mechanism. But even the mapping of the genome hasn't quelled all objections of implausibility, for reasons that Kirschner and Gerhart restate in their opening chapters. At the cellular component level, however, the mathematically possible mutations are so incredibly numerous that success by random variation, again and again in the course of phenotypic evolution, seems utterly unbelievable. That's where our authors enter the discussion.
Advocates of "Intelligent Design"! If you detect a note of challenge in my erratic summary of The Plausibility of Life, you're on the money. I challenge you to read this book carefully and critically. If you can't make heads or tails of it, you'd better modestly trim your ID sails. If you understand it well enough to venture a refutation, I'll be happy to hear from you.
 If only Matt Ridley wrote this book... September 20, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fascinating topic, well researched I'm sure but could the writing be more dense, more wooden, less engaging? A better bet might be Sean B. Carroll's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" though even there I felt the sheer magic of what is being relayed doesn't come through. Not a good choice for a novice with no background in genetics, not that it's too technical, just too thin on examples.
I look forward to the likes of Matt Ridley or Richard Dawkins tackling Evolutionary Development as the mind-blowing coolness of how embryos develop from almost nothing to, well, me and you deserves a real power-hitter in the popular science genre.
But until then it's worth the effort (yes it is some effort) to skim the surface of this fascinating new frontier in biology.
Good material, not well written June 5, 2007
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
This book lays out how recent advances in embryology and the understanding of gene regulation show that "large" phenotypic changes are possible through smaller genotypic mutation. Too bad it wasn't written by a better explainer, say Dawkins or Ridley.
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