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Dawkins Vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest Paperback – June 25, 2003

by Kim Sterelny (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
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A revised and updated edition of a title exploring the battle between evolutionary theory's biggest names. Known as one of the firecest battles in science Dawkins and Gould and their supporters have argued over evolution, for over twenty years, and continue, despite Gould's death. Kim Sterelny exposes the real differences between the conceptions of evolution of these two leading scientists. He shows that the conflict extends beyond evolution to their very beliefs in science itself.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    208 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Icon Books
  4. Publication date
    June 25, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.63 x 8.03 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1840467800
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1840467802
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Icon Books; New Edition (June 25, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1840467800
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1840467802
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.63 x 8.03 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 15 ratings

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
15 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Tintin
5.0 out of 5 stars Focused, succinct summary: nicely done
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2010
Verified Purchase
Published in 2001 this little book does a nice job explaining the fundamental arguments between the late Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins -- two extraordinary (and influential) contemporary scholars on evolution. Each has their followers. Dawkins emphasizes natural selection's gradually accumulated change leading toward more adaptive organisms; Gould focuses instead on "punctuated equilibrium," long periods of little change periodically goosed by cataclysm, followed by a "weeding out" of the less fit. Gradual change, he says, is canceled out to a large extent, but the fluctuations in the environment. Much of the selection, he says, takes place at the group or species level, rather than the level of gene or worse, the "meme" which has seduced the gullible to think evolution affects behavior. Gould was not one to mince words, apparently.

There is much more of interest in this well crafted booklet. Their actual views have been presented in simplistic form, which only confuses the discussion. Some of their real disagreements had subsided by the time the book was written. Yet there remains several clear divisions not only on the way natural selection works but on science, and religion (which Dawkins despises) and evolutionary psychology (which Gould despised). It's quite an interesting read. The differences are clearer in this book than I have found elsewhere, and the author seems balanced though admits in the end to being swayed more toward Dawkins.

This probably isn't a book one should pick up before The Selfish Gene and at least some familiarity with the Gould/Dawkins debate. Gould's work is mostly published in journals so somewhat less accessible to the casual reader. Sterelny also provides a very nice point-by-point recap in the final chapter and a useful section that recommends and comments on further readings for every topic.
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Geoffwood
3.0 out of 5 stars At least I got it used
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2016
Nothing per se wrong with the book, but I don't understand the demographic for this. Aptly covers the general theories of both, but nothing you couldn't pick up from the original texts, which are vastly more entertaining to read. I'm assuming like biology 110 classes. People that like science, but don't really want to invest more than an hour or two reading about it. If you like Wikipedia, but worry that your internet might one day go out and you want a 175 page, 14 pt font hard copy. Students of Professor Sterelny taking whatever class he teaches that he wrote this for.
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Richard E. Hayes
5.0 out of 5 stars smart guys thumping heads
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2014
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If you have read Dawkins and Gould you will find this brief book valuable. It puts the 30-year debate between them in context. He says "the heat of this exchange is puzzling [f]or Dawkins and Gould agree on much that matters." This is important, because their supporters (Daniel Dennett is a powerful supporter of Dawkins) and opponents of evolutionary theory may exaggerate the significance of their specific and esoteric theoretical differences. This new edition (2007) takes into account Gould's massive "Structure of Evolutionary Theory" and more recent writings of Dawkins. Gould famously faulted other evolutionists for extreme 'adaptationism" -- which he ridiculed as "Panglossian." Even brilliant scientists can magnify small differences into causes for intellectual combat. Excellent bibliography.
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kittensandcream
4.0 out of 5 stars Great overview
Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2014
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Good analysis of the debate, though it is a bit repetitive at times though. I recommend it, especially if you want an overview of a debate of how evolution has been occurring over the past millennia
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ocean t sweet
5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2008
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This is the most engaging book on evolution I've read since reading The Selfish Gene nearly twenty years ago. The author's grasp of theoretical fine points is impressive, his writing style is crisp, his anecdotes numerous.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great summary of the issues.
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2009
This is a brief, but very readable summary of the main positions adopted by the two title characters. The areas where they agree and differ laid out well, and the conclusions may be surprising to any who thought these scientists somehow had 'opposite' or incompatible views. At the heart of the matter, both Dawkins and Gould are Darwinists, with differing views on the weight which should be given to natural and sexual selection relative to random and, (for humans) cultural processes.

This is also an excellent resource for those who must deal with 'intelligent design' proponents who insist that the Dawkins/Gould debate spelled the end of evolutionay therory!
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Top reviews from other countries

Adam Southworth
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 14, 2016
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Great product, thanks!
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Olly Buxton
3.0 out of 5 stars Biologists, red in tooth and claw
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 25, 2008
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Given that it covers a particularly vitriolic skirmish between two huge, polarising and consistently outspoken opposing generals in the Science Wars, Kim Sterelny had on his hands a fascinating topic. He quite easily could have crammed this brief volume full of the proverbial sizzling gypsies - gory details of the academic handbags which were exchanged in full view of an admiring dilettante public - but inexplicably, he chose not to. Instead, the fieriest debate is reduced to its desiccated intellectual premises and is presented worthily and dryly. This is, no doubt, second nature to a professional scientist like Sterelny, but it displays a lack of worldliness for an aspiring popular author; a worldliness, ironically enough, possessed in oodles by both of his subjects.

Unlike your usual zoologist (though granted, I don't know that many), Richard Dawkins invites extremes of adoration or vitriol from just about anyone who's heard of him (and, given his gift for self publicity, that's most people); The late Steve Gould was (on this side of the ditch at any rate) of less general reknown but equally susceptible, in the right circles, to excitable opinion.

Dawkins the zoologist is a crusading atheist - irony intended - and devoted son of the enlightenment; Gould the paleontologist was possessor of a more open-minded view on woolly artsy pursuits like religion, literature and architecture, allowing them to bleed into his professional scientific opinion in a way that horrified the purist in Dawkins. Also, apparently, Gould was a Marxist. Battle lines accordingly drawn.

Now, to his (professional, if not authorial) credit, Sterelny abstains from addressing Gould's politics, and instead succinctly and patiently outlines the camps' respective differences in evolutionary theory - differences which are relatively subtle to non specialists, truth be told - but (no doubt being a good scientific chap - clean fight, fair play and all that) refrains from descending into the real particulars of the debate, in particular referring only in passing to a petulant and protracted exchange in the New York review of books following publication of Daniel Dennett's Dawkinsesque  Darwin's Dangerous Idea . (How about that for a bit of alliteration, by the way).

Such noble prurience is a mistake, in this reviewer's opinion, for it neuters a book which, had it been rendered breathlessly enough, could have been a rip-snorter.

If it were me I would have extracted much of the debate in full and provided some journalistic context around how it came about, and certainly extracted some of the peachier exchanges. For example, how about this one:

"[Dennett's] limited and superficial book reads like a caricature of a caricature--for if Richard Dawkins has trivialized Darwin's richness by adhering to the strictest form of adaptationist argument in a maximally reductionist mode, then Dennett, as Dawkins's publicist, manages to convert an already vitiated and improbable account into an even more simplistic and uncompromising doctrine. If history, as often noted, replays grandeurs as farces, and if T.H. Huxley truly acted as "Darwin's bulldog," then it is hard to resist thinking of Dennett, in this book, as "Dawkins's lapdog."

Cracking stuff - but it finds no place in Sterelny's volume, and I had to look it up online (it, and the whole vituperative article from which it came, is reproduced at the New York Review of Books' website.)

Sterelny's main problem seems to be that he is such a frightfully good egg he can't bring himself to dramatise proceedings, which are screaming out for it, at all. He confesses an intellectual kinmship with Dawkins but then is so scrupulously fair to Gould in his assessment of their competing arguments that it is hard to comprehend what he even sees in Dawkins' view.

That might be my bias: while much taken by Dawkins' and Dennett's books when I first read them, I have found more resonance in Gould's humanist, pragmatic view the more I've read of it (and the older I've got), so (as a point of disclosure) I come out on the other side of the argument to Sterelny. That's not my problem with his book; however, quite the opposite: it's the very bloodlessness of it.

Olly Buxton
31 people found this helpful
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Outrider
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 4, 2014
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An okay book which really shows what nonsense is written by Dawkins especially.
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