Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo,   ISBN:9780393327793

Customer Rating: 

Dr. Carroll likes his rock and roll, and he'll give you an unwanted quote from time to time, to let you know that he's cool, as well as really smaht. The undertitle of the book, and its constant refrain throughout - the rhyming, new-wave rock-sounding "Evo Devo," gives the biggest hint as to what's wrong with this 'new' science.

The clever, cloying catch-phrase will now be employed by undergraduates, and Ph.D. candidates everywhere, to describe a myriad of processes that they don't understand. (They'll just sound cute and clever saying it).

The trouble with the book isn't what Dr. Carroll gets right - and he gets a lot right. Indeed, things develop! There are patterns to that development. Those mechanical patterns can sometimes be elucidated, even described, even tinkered with to produce horrible, horrible animals (that researchers should be remorseful for causing to suffer, but don't seem to care much at all).

The reductionists have named genes, have described some intermediary functions, have given clever, populist names to their ideas: Toolbox genes! Do they control the birth and regulation of the entire organism? Are the great mysteries solved at last!?

Yes! Or, no, goes the answer. It's just another step on that 'right track,' we're told, with firm self-assurance. Well, he's a good researcher, and should be praised for his courage in undermining the Darwinian world-view. How fast is change? How quick evolution?

Fast. Quick. As needed. (As needed? To that in a moment).

So, there's a great deal that's 'right,' and it is interesting, if both a little dense, and more than a little under-served in true technical description. We're too quickly served with those glib shortcuts, "turned on, turned off," and the constant, "selected for."

We learn what we might have learned by opening our eyes in a field of wildgrass and little creatures: Living creatures seem to emerge from a matrix, they are reflections and refractions of each other. They mimic and recapitulate form ever and always in subtle or wild new arrangements.

Carroll gives us his specialty's machinist point of view: in which a repeated signal or sample of gene can give rise to related - if not very similar parts. That is, parts that have similar functions - the 'toolkit gene' for your rump, for example is a hind-quarter in whatever animal it appears in. A gene that seems to give permission for an eye to develop in a fly or small insect, also seems to give the same permission in a mouse.

Neat! But, well, why is this revolutionary? Only because the old established evolutionary truths were mostly bunk. That is, they weren't true - they were men grasping in the dark at ideas of how life could come into existence - and once in existence, could mutate or metamorphose into so many forms, so endless, so...you know.

But these same men were up against a wall - not of their creation, but of their inheritence. Rene' Descartes, and the hostile determination (itself a reaction to the Medieval Church) that the world was a dead thing, soulless, and without spirit or nature or vital force. Only pullies, levers, cogs and wheels. The screaming in pain of tortured animals to Descartes was nothing more than the squeaking of turning wheels or gears.

And so life, devoid of vital force, or a transcendent penetrating universal spirit (or energy), needed to be explained with this caveat foremost in mind:

It's got to be a machine, and you cannot mention an idea of spirit or God (whichever, whatever, whoever's) or creator or really, intelligent, organized, systematic creativity.

And so science writers endlessly commit a series of gaffs in their writing, always refering to those things in passive tenses (limbs and organs "were designed," "adapted themselves to," "chose a new pathway," "invented color," "devised a new plan.") Who did the devising?

This is the place all Western science writers live and die, and get stuck. They're still fighting an idea of an Enlightenment "GOD" (The Judeo-Christian Jahweh, and El - look up any reference on 'father gods'). This, an exterior force, all-knowing, all-controlling, who either started the entire project rolling, and walked away, or is watching, like Santa Claus, taking notes on good and bad behavior.

The Hindus have no such bias against 'purpose' or 'direction' of a transcendent force in the universe, and in our world. Their gods are not separate entities who never mingle with the people; their creator god Brahmha, dreams the world into existence, and in the dream, plays all the parts, and in playing the parts of you and me and everyone we see and know, forgets that it's a play, and takes it seriously...

What does that have to do with this book?

The author, Carroll, struggles as all reductionist later-Darwinian synthesizers do with the "why" of things. In fact, they often are so confused themselves about why anything should exist at all, in a purposeless, dead, accidental, mechanical wind-up, winding-down universe (that of Darwin and Dawkins and Einstein - but not of Halton Arp), that everytime they find a mechanism that better describes a process, they attribute the entire process to the little 'switch' they think they discovered.

It is interesting, indeed, that the current batch of Evolutionary biologists are moving recklessly beyond Richard Dawkins and the great and holy Synthesis of Huxley and Mayr; it is wonderful that they are looking into the process that describes life as it is changing shape. What will remain a bane for all of them, though, is that they will always fail to find a prime movement. Nothing will ever stop leading them back, and back, and back - because whether they realize it or not, they are still trapped in that reactive Enlightenment worldview, desparate to DISPROVE the existence of a certain idea of a creative universal transcendent force...

And yet remaining so unwilling to admit that it is not in their purview to either prove, or disprove it, nor should they try.

It's neat stuff, watching the seeds develop into plants. You can describe the growing, but you can't tell anyone WHY it bothers to happen. Except to say that it does...

Customer Rating: 

It's a good book with some useful information. Somewhat repetitive and dry. This book is about 1/3 longer than it needs to be.

Regarding the title: While I like the references to Darwin's writings ("Endless Forms Most Beautiful"), I personally find the "Evo Devo" wordplay overly cute and meaningless. And I wouldn't call it a new science - more like "Evolution, evolving" (so to speak). Science builds on past knowledge; there's nothing revolutionary here.

This book is ok in parts, very good in others - but - overall, I'd recommend Neil Shubin's "YOUR INNER FISH" instead. It's better written, more interesting and gets 5 STARS from this reader! Enjoy!

Customer Rating: 

The discoveries of evolutionary development ("Evo Devo") displayed in Endless Forms Most Beautiful extend our knowledge of Mendelian genetics and DNA to offer a clear picture of how animals present in the Cambium period evolved into present-day forms with their variety of body types, colors and designs. Endless Forms Most Beautiful should be made part of any high school biology course.

Customer Rating: 

One of the most well written current evolutionary writtings I have read in awhile. Highly recommend this book to not just the public but many up and coming scientists like myself.

Customer Rating: 

Sean Carroll, researcher and professor at the Howard Hughes Institute, is a genetics expert who offers a wonderful exploration of the cutting-edge science of evolutionary development (evo devo). This book, drawing from decades of genetics research as well as experiments performed in Carroll's own lab, reveals the subtle and exquisite results of millions of years of evolution as it relates to (specifically) embryology.

The first hundred pages or so are a primer on evolution as it is theorized in the Modern Synthesis of evolution. We find that the evidence for evolution is not just substantial, but largely consistent with this theory and overwhelmingly evidence of its predictions.

The second part of the book serve to isolate a few choice types of evidence, including fossil records and genes, and presents the findings of evolutionary development researchers as they apply to the making and diversity of animal species. Carroll focuses on numerous examples in nature of evolutionary processes, including the diversity and differences of butterfly patterns, three different wing development processes, and the coloration changes which lead to black pigmentation.

Carroll wraps up the latter half of the book by challenging the notion that creationism can explain any of this, and instead, offers that the proof of evolution was undeniable decades ago, and only strengthened with more recent research. Humans share a staggering portion of our genes, including the nearly-universal tool kit genes which dictate timing and location of other genes. Human beings are shown to be part of this earth-wide process, not a seperate entity with unusual properties.

At times, Endless Forms is a bit clinical, with several dozen pages running together filled with technical terms and often difficult-to-understand processes. I did have to reread sections to fully understand what was being stated. While this made it slow going at times, the result for me (and I hope for other readers) was a detailed understanding of why evo devo research can answer difficult questions about evolutionary processes which are unanswered in other disciplines.

For anyone interested in the clinical side of evolutionary research, this book is an excellent intermediate-level study of evo devo. Carroll is a fascinating researcher with years of first-hand experience in the field. While the text is dry at times, the information provided is worth the time spent to understand it. Four stars.