This book is selective in what it covers. There is little about invertebrates, beyond Kettlewell's moths, or plants, beyond Mendel's peas. It is about the arguments for and against the theory of evolution by natural selection. It is largely a case against Creationism and Intelligent Design, but it does not cover up the controversies of the early development of the theory of evolution. There is another book called Icons of Evolution which gives the creationist view, and it is suggested that the reader compares the books. I have decided not to do this but a Google search will bring up the full text if you want it.
The various chapters in the book look at aspects of the development of the theory of evolution. The early parts of the story come in chapters entitled for Darwin and Huxley, but all the key players get a mention: Chambers, Lamarck, Owen and many others. The more recent parts of the story are covered in chapters like the one titled “Fruit flies”, which is the account of the theory of genetic inheritance and of genes on chromosomes and is mainly about the work of T.H. Morgan, and the chapter on Neo‐Dawinism which is mainly, but not exclusively, on the work of Mayr on speciation. Dinosaurs, as the first spectacularly different fossils, and Archeopteryx as a feathered dinosaur that could fly, get chapters. The first, however, sets out to use dinosaurs to discredit that idea the evolution describes a chain of improvements from slime to humans, and the second is used to show that the birds are surviving dinosaurs. There are chapters on the fossil record, radiometric dating and on cladistics that give the background to the science behind evolution and demonstrate the implausibility of the young earth models. Given, in many cases, that opposition to evolution is really an objection to the evolution of humans from apes a number of chapters deal with specific groups of fossil humans; Java man, Peking man, Neanderthals and Lucy get chapters. And there is one on Piltdown man and other misidentifications and fakes. Louis Leakey who discovered an amazing array of fossils and did much to popularise the story of human evolution, and who was prone to rather wide speculation at times, gets a chapter evaluating his contribution. The last chapter in the first volume covers the monkey trials and the last in the second covers Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is not the same as Creationism; it is an attempt to get a version of Creationism dressed up as science, and in doing so it becomes selective in its use of scriptural texts and discusses a designer that is not identified as God.
The authors of the various chapters put together convincing cases for evolution. However, they do not cover up misunderstandings, misinterpretation or even fraud. Creationists and Intelligent Design supporters are right when the say there are unknowns and inconsistencies in the argument for evolution, but they a wrong when they claim the problems undermine the whole theory. One might wonder why such people do not attack string theory or quantum physics, but they, as the last chapter shows, have a political agenda rather than a specifically theological position.
Can one justify buying this for library stock or as a reference book? I think you can on two grounds. It is a good toolbox to deal with Intelligent Design and will be particularly valuable in the USA. It is also a good introduction to aspects of evolution. The chapters do stand alone, a feature of reference books, and further reading suggested for each. Although some of the chapters assume perhaps more background knowledge that the average reader would have, they are on the whole good interesting reading and schools and public libraries should consider having a copy. Those interested in the history and social and philosophical aspects of biological knowledge will find this a good collection of essays with many useful references. There are a few typographical errors most of which I would ignore, but I will pick up on two. In the first chapter, “Evolution as a paradigm”, when examples of family, species and genus are defined, they are correct in one example, but mixed in the other. The second is where a table Kettlewell's Mark‐Release Capture Experiments has been replaced by a table of geological eras. One can now wait for the creationists and Intelligent Design supporters to say biologists can not agree on what a species is (which, in some cases is true, for examples blackberries and dandelions) and that Kettlewell's results must be fake (which they very definitely were not) because he could not have been releasing moths in the Cambrian Era as the Earth is only 10,000 years old.
This book is part of the Greenwood Icons series. Reference Reviews has seen this before, for example Icons of Horror and the Supernatural (RR 2007/380) and Icons of Business (RR 2008/21). This series would not have caught my attention or interest but if the other contributions are as good as this volume in presenting ideas in a fair and lucid way it is a series to keep an eye on.
