The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (A Brief History of the Natural World) Paperback – Illustrated, August 24, 2010

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, by retired science professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, is at once of `thriller' and 'sure-footed non-fiction' genres. Mind-bending to wondrously eye-opening, this work clarifies the mountainous evidence for Evolution. How nice the synchronicity: publishing it on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th of The Origin of Species. Marketing has its place. I had mulled Darwin's statement: "There is grandeur in this view of life." After reading TGSOE, it rang truer yet. And toward the last of its 437 pages, I was almost giddy (sounds isotopily unstable, I know)[Footnote: The Bible and Qur'an are not science books] Scientific findings should not be ignored, dismissed out of hand, or its data unanalyzed, because it belies dogma; often enough, human animals are seduced into delusional world views due to fear; perusing a few pages here n there just might start a process of freeing one up, however, from its limiting effects. When is it that one gets dissuaded from questioning? Or derided for critical thinking? Or if fortunate, encouraged to curiosity? Well, if YOU were dissuaded at some point, Dawkins' book may be your ticket to a life-renewing antidote. (Consider visiting a museum of natural history, too.) Now I doubt that the mere reading of this work will result in all the intellectual mutations Dawkins hoped for; certainly not among the devout, who faithfully remain cocooned in the beguiling comforts of platitudes. But in time...Revelation: 1) modern species do not evolve into other modern species; they share common ancestors. 2) Animal and plant breeding--techniques applied for centuries--give us insight into branches of living diversity that spread over millions upon millions of years, via random, mutating genes within DNA. (Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts have all derived--via non-random/artificial selection by bright humans--from a common ancestor: wild cabbage) Pedigree dog-breeding led to today's 200+ breeds, each sharing a common ancestor: the wolf; molecular genetics proved it. Wolves adapted to man via natural selection, by self-domesticating into village dogs. 3) When we observe an increase or decrease in the frequency with which a certain gene appears in a gene pool, THAT is evolution. 4) Skilful breeding (artificial, or by insects, bats, hummingbirds, frogs) of roses or sunflowers, produced innumerable varieties. 5) Cross-fertilization via pollination led Darwin, who'd come upon an orchid with a foot-long tubular, to predict the existence of a very long-nosed Madagascar moth with an even longer tongue; just such a moth was found. 6) By sexual selection, Nature plays the role of a selecting agent, and living bodies are patchworks of compromise aimed at survival, but hardly perfectly. 7) Wild foxes have been bred for tameness, using variations in `flight distances' and cute facial expressions. 8) Orchids exist that fool male bees into pollinating them by looking like a female bee. 9) Measured age of Earth is 46 million centuries--4.6 billion years. Now let that sink in. Hmm?Measuring Time: re: Radioactive clocks--unstable isotopes decay, turning into something else at known rates; `half-life' is a favored measure: time for half an element's atoms to decay; Geological clocks--tree rings (date back 11,500 years), coral-reef rings, carbon dating, which began in the 1940s, was refined by mass spectrometry; an accumulating quantity of argon-40 in a rock crystal derives from decay in potassium-40, and these accumulations enable elapsed-time measurements. If an igneous rock shows a 50-50 ratio of argon to potassium, it is 1.26 million years old. Now at the moment an animal or plant dies it ceases to take in Carbon-14, and so begins to decay to Nitrogen-14; elapsed time can be measured as the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the deceased. Is chemistry hot or cool? Maybe both.Evolution in our time: a) elephants' tusks shortening within mere decades, as humans killed for ivory; these mammals suspected or knew the reason why, at some level; b) evolutionary divergence was also evidenced on islands off Croatia: in 1971, pairs of lizards were introduced to a non-lizard islet; then in 2008--some 19 lizard generations later--a thriving population of `new-home' lizards was found to have grown larger heads than the `old home' lizards. The evolutionary change? Traced to the vegetarian diet in their new islet setting. c) Guppies (aquarium fish) evolve with blend-in camouflage--depending on type/prevalence of predators--or by changing color-schemes where predators are scarcer, all in an effort by males to attract females by standing out. (Hey, tattoos may yet become inked into our DNA)A fundamental (ist) myth whacked: No modern species is descended from any other modern species; nope, humans are NOT descended from monkeys; but each species shares a common ancestor that dates back 6 million years. `Lucy' from Ethiopia/1974, aka Australopithecus afarensis, is a bipedal hominid fossil 3.2 million years old. Homo erectus fossils (Java Man), less than a million years old, were unearthed in 1891; in 1929 (Peking Man). Ardi, found in Ethiopia in 1992, are the fossilized skeletal remains of a female Ardipithecus ramidus, a human-like species 4.4 million years old. And the bits just keep on comin'"Natural selection favors the survival in the gene pool of the genetic mutations responsible for making crucial changes in embryos." Dawkins devotes Ch 9 to how geographical barriers (islands or isolation) play key roles in evolution; barriers arise via quakes, tsunamis, climate change, volcanic eruptions, continental drift. In Ch 10, he shows us a fascinating display of similarities--invariance across all vertebrates--among mammalian skeletons, despite differences in skeletal size, shape, or purpose (viz., Pterodactyl vs. human). The photography and illustrations are first-rate.The molecular clock assumes that aspects of evolution itself proceed at fixed rates. The genome is subject to mutations; only in a tiny portion of it, however, is it that any mutation bears on survival; natural selection rids deleterious mutations, yet favors ones that enhance life by forging adaptations to changing environments. In evolutionary time, mutations may go `to fixation'--become part of a genetic norm. Evolutionary history is written all over us. In dolphins, too--for having migrated from land to sea they still have lungs, not gills; nature's record is dotted with major flaws being "corrected"--a genetic tinkering, if you will, at a local level that nature required for a species' survival.Given contemporary human health woes, the Devil's chaplain could gleefully write a helluva book recounting them all, but Dawkins emphasizes that nature is neither kind nor unkind; neither favoring nor opposing suffering. Near the end of this book comes a hint of what Malthus, Darwin, and the like have already noted (as has non-notable me): human over-population has dire implications, ones we ought not to dismiss.Can't recommend this book enough. Sheer fun, and a worthwhile benefit: enrichment.

One of my fondest childhood memories was from a family vacation to Paris. Of all the wonderful things in that city, one place struck me the most, and my memories, upon a recent revisit, were relit: The Grand Gallery of Evolution. The Grand Gallery is organized far different than American museums. The entire structure is dedicated to placing Darwin's theory of natural selection right in front of you, to let your eyes see the story of life itself. There are few colorful placards, no special themed exhibits, or other things tailored to appeal to pop sensibility. Instead, the viewer is faced with endless rows of skeletal fish, reptiles, amphibians, marsupials, mammals, and crustaceans in one chamber, and a less dense collection of dinosaur fossils in the other room. The skeletons in the first chamber are each placed amidst related species, so as to indicate their shared heritage. The collection spans the smallest fish to the largest whales, the most humble toad to fearsome land predators. There is one particularly morbid shelf that places infant skeletons side-by-side of each ape species, including a human infant skeleton. Above all this is a wide class ceiling window that allows light to pour through onto the specimens. No artificial light is necessary to view life's grandeur.The Grand Gallery, through the sheer brute facticity of physical evidence, proves what Dawkins in his latest book "The Greatest Show on Earth" proves through citation and argument. Because of his crusading against theism during the 00s, it can be easy to forget that Dawkins is one of the titanic names of evolutionary biology. Not only did he pioneer research into the role played by genetic competition in competitions between organisms, but he has written multiple "user-friendly" guides to the mechanics and intellectual debates within evolution. With this most recent tome, however, Dawkins seeks to provide a much-needed guide to the evidence that proves Darwin's theory. He covers a wide variety of different "sectors" of evolutionary evidence, ranging from fossil dating, comparative anatomy, modern genetics, paleoanthropology, and others. He tackles each of these subjects, and demonstrates that when the study of life is approached with the scientific method in hand, it's impossible not to see the incredible explanatory power of Darwinism. Although Dawkins frequently addresses creationist critiques of evolutionary theory throughout the text, this book has both an effect and appeal beyond those who want to disprove the nonsense known as "Intelligent Design." Dawkins succeeds in paying homage to the awe-inspiring natural history of life itself. The book entertains and inspires, as well as informs."The Greatest Show on Earth" is not just some recap of your high school bio courses either. Dawkins is a genuinely talented scientific writer, and his style aids greatly in absorption of the information he presents. However, Dawkins also tells the story of how modern science finally discovered natural selection, along with all the bumps and failures along the way. Furthermore, and this is something I give him a lot of credit for, Dawkins discusses the epistemological challenges that evolutionary biology has struggled to overcome throughout its development. One of the most basic challenges that evolutionary biology faced in its formation, in terms of its conceptual apparatus, was with the way the human mind conceives of living beings themselves. We like to think of living organisms as fixed species, and our complex taxonomical systems help perpetuate this illusion. As Dawkins states though, life is Heraclitean, not Platonic. It is always in flux. Organisms are bundles of genes which constantly compete with each other for expression. All evolutionary changes are contingent by essence. They depend on the pressures and mutations that an individual organism faces. They do not fit into a master plan, and it is clear that there is no intelligence behind their design, at least in the sense that Creationists argue. The physiological and behavioral characteristics that genes express can shift in their usage, and reconfigure to push evolution onwards. Feathers were originally "meant" to keep certain dinosaur species warm, or perhaps aid in sexual selection. However, at some point, natural selection pushed this characteristic towards usage in flight. The eventual usage of feathers for flight was entirely contingent. Evolution easily could have pushed the avian dinosaur species in another direction. This is the same reason, as Dawkins points out, why bats have an entirely different means of flight from birds, because the means by which they gained the ability to fly was contingent. It was based on certain selection pressures they faced at a certain point in their natural history, and was based on what biological tools bats already had in their repertoire, which didn't necessarily have anything to do with flight beforehand. Also, many seemingly complex devices, such as eyes, go through phases of increasing (and sometimes decreasing) complexity, but not because they are working towards an end goal, but because natural selection pushes them in different directions at different points in evolutionary history.Some of the most fascinating pieces of evidence that Dawkins provides are recent, and highly successful, attempts at recreating species evolution in laboratory settings. By simply exposing microrganisms, inspects, and fish into controlled settings, it has been demonstrated that evolution, and huge leaps in evolution at that, can occur before our very eyes. Many changes that Creationists used to claim were impossible can actually be observed directly by the scientific process!Aside from this, Dawkins provides the reader with glimpses into the story of natural history in our own bodies, the organs of animals, the fossilized imprints of plants, and countless other sources. The incredible thing, which I don't think I entirely grasped before reading this book, is that the evidence doesn't simply point to the fact that changes occur constantly throughout natural history, but that we can see the battles between competing genes as they're played out in the very bodily being of life itself.Needless to say, I have a high opinion of this book. If you've been turned off by the sometimes boorish (although often insightful) things Dawkins has to say about organized religion, then I implore you to put aside your prejudices and read this book. Dawkins is a lovely writer when you give him a chance. If you affirm the scientific theory of Darwinism, but don't feel as if you really know much about evolution per se, then this book will go a long way in filling that gap. If you're an ID proponent or a Creationist, then I double dog dare you to read this. I have no doubt that you'll come out shaken.