Evolution, Deborah Charlesworth
Evolution, Deborah Charlesworth
List: $12.99 | Sale: $9.10
Club: $6.49

Evolution
A Very Short Introduction

Author: Deborah Charlesworth, Brian Charlesworth

Narrator: TBD

Unabridged: 4 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/08/2021


Synopsis

Less than 450 years ago, all European scholars believed that the Earth was at the center of a Universe that was at most a few million miles in extent, and that the planets, sun, and stars all rotated around this center. Less than 250 years ago, they believed that the Universe was created essentially in its present state about 6000 years ago. Even less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was still dominant. The recognition by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection has completely transformed our understanding of the living world, including our own origins.

Brian and Deborah Charlesworth provide a clear and concise summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, and how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. They introduce the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology, as they have developed since Darwin and Wallace on the subject, over 140 years ago, and discuss some of the remaining questions regarding processes. They highlight the wide range of evidence for evolution, and the importance of an evolutionary understanding for instance in combating the rapid evolution of resistance by bacteria to antibiotics and of HIV to antiviral drugs.

About Deborah Charlesworth

Deborah Charlesworth is a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, and former president of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. She is coauthor of Elements of Evolutionary Genetics with her husband, Brian.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ana on August 17, 2023

Teach me about evolution and stop trying to convince evolution “disproves” a Designer. It doesn’t.......more

Goodreads review by Mai on March 30, 2017

This book is a very very short introduction, it might be good for people who have never studied biology and molecular biology, but as a biology student it was boring except final chapter.......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on January 30, 2023

Natural selection is often used to solve difficult design problems for complex systems. In this process, the engineer does not have a design in mind, but only the desired function. In designing machines and software, sometimes a very efficient way to find the optimal design is to successively make sma......more