Monad to Man

Michael Ruse is the former Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Gifford Lecturer, and the author or editor of more than sixty books.

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Progress and Culture 2. The Birth of Evolutionism 3. The Nineteenth Century: From Cuvier to Owen 4. Charles Darwin and Progress 5. Evolution as World View 6. The Professional Biologist 7. Evolution Travels West 8. British Evolutionists and Mendelian Genetics 9. Discipline Building in Britain 10. The Genetics of Populations 11. The Synthesis 12. Professional Evolutionism 13. Contemporary Debates 14. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Credits Index

What is your favourite model of biological evolution? Whether it is rungs on a ladder, the ever-branching tree, or even the more modern image of movement between peaks in a 'fitness landscape', chances are it treats time in just one way: later means better...The idea of evolution was the child of the hopes of progress, as Michael Ruse puts it in Monad to Man, his impressive 'philosophical history' of these notions...Ruse tracks down [this] tendency in the work of innumerable writers...All this makes [his] book a superb summary of the views of every major evolutionist. The result is unfailingly interesting. Ruse presents much to argue with, both for aficionados of evolution and for theorists of science.