For myriad reasons, I’m essentially a blank slate when it comes to science and I’d like to aquire a bit more knowledge then I have now. (Mods - I’m posting this here because this seems like the best forum to get some good recommendations; do as you see fit).
As far as books - since I don’t know much, if you know of some books that are fairly easy to understand, that’d be awesome. Or maybe indicate a level of difficulty?
(I know TalkOrigins is a popular website to reference, but I’d much prefer a few books - they’re portable!)
Ernst Mayr’s “What Evolution Is” is a great resource for anyone interested in learning about evolution. Mayr doesn’t cover the most recent advancements in evolutionary theory, but it still serves as a good introduction.
Any number of Stephen Jay Gould books are good as well; I recommend “The Panda’s Thumb”.
I recommend Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” for, well, nearly everything, but the chapter on the first discoveries of dinosaur fossils and the Origin of Species is especially good. He writes for scientific beginners, as a scientific beginner, with enough eloquence and wit to charm even the most erudite professor.
And for evolution in general, you can’t beat Stephen Jay Gould. Most of his books are collections of short essays. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History is different: it’s the account of a revolution in the understanding of evolution. It’s more technical, tho still written for the general public. It’s well worth the effort, though.
I’d suggest Gould as well. The *Panda’s Thumb * is a classic. I’ve also read and enjoyed *The Flamingo’s Smile * and Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. These are pretty approachable since they are a collection of relatively short essays.
Yes! I love this book! It’s plain good writing, not just science writing. My copy has numerous underlinings and highlightings of my favorite passages. It’s also fun watching anthropology documentaries and recognizing some scientists who were interviewed in the book.
Another book I really like is Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution. What I like is that it devotes some time to what the theories were before Darwin came up with his. It also spends some time talking about experiments that helped explain and expand upon Darwin’s theories (work with fruit flies, proof that it’s DNA that carries the information, decoding DNA, and then paleoanthropolgy. One of the authors discovered “Lucy”). It doesn’t have the latest and greatest info (it was published in '89) but it’s good.
I think The Selfish Gene and The Red Queen are really good at explaining why some seemingly “bad” traits are allowed to exist (TRQ focuses specifically on sex’s role in all this). They’re good if you think “Darwin’s idea is pretty good, but what about [fill in the blank]? What’s the point of that?”. Or if you run into someone who does.
I have often wondered about about proponents of “intelligent design”, which seems to be a cloaked front for creationism. Are there any books that make a positive case for ID?
By positive I mean that they logically formulate their case from the ground up, rather than merely pointing at gaps in the fossil record and concluding “if they can’t explain that, then it must have been guided by some intelligent source” or saying “it’s too complex, so it must be intelligent design”.
He has a new book out “The Ancestor’s Tale” written in the format of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I’ve thumbed thru it, but haven’t read the whole thing yet. It looks good and very comprehesive.
Like I said, the answer is no. Behe’s argument for “irreducible complexity” is not new, nor any less flawed than those put forth previously. Behe simply knows enough scientific minutae to speak convincingly to a lay audience. He apparently lets his faith cloud his understanding of evolution, however, both of what is known, and what has not yet been fully explained. Complicated parts fitting together marvelously well is not a “proof” of anything, intelligent design or otherwise; it’s a stirring observation, but finding it incredible might only reveal our own ignorance of its origins, rather than recognition of intelligent design. One can simply dismiss his entire premise on those grounds alone.
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker focuses more on a Darwinist view of human behavior. I’d recommend you read the aforementioned The Moral Animal : Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (whew! what a title) by Robert Wright before tackling The Blank Slate to give you some background for Pinker’s ideas. I also second The Third Chimpanzee. Anything Diamond writes is very readable and is usually pretty accurate. My interest is behavior rather than physiology or the mechanisms of evolution so my recommendations are skewed in that direction.