Understanding Natural Selection

Michael Ruse is Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, Ontario. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Gifford Lecturer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the recipient of four honorary degrees. He is the author/editor of over sixty books, including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2013); The Gaia Hypothesis: Life on a Pagan Planet (University of Chicago Press, 2013); Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2016), and The Cambridge History of Atheism (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

• Introduction; 1. The origin of species; 2. Organism and mechanism: rival root metaphors; 3. 'The non-Darwinian revolution?'; 4. The synthesis; 5. Is natural selection a vera causa?; 6.The positive case; 7.Time for a change?; 8. Natural selection and its discontents; Envoi; Index.

'Michael Ruse has written many books on evolutionary theory, but this may well be his best: succinct, clear, and comprehensive. Your interpretation of Darwin's accomplishment may differ from Ruse's - mine does - but he offers the classic view of Darwin as having introduced mechanism into biology. His treatment of natural selection runs from an intense examination of Darwin's development of the concept to its role in population genetics and morality. It's a gem of a book.' Robert J. Richards, Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Science, University of Chicago, USA