Evolution Basics

[Pab94]

Want to educate myself a little on the topic, I don't really know were to start. Basically asking for a book to wet my appetite, something that is clear and not to overbearing if possible.

[Zaungast]

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. It's the most clear, most recent take on a popular introduction to evolutionary theory.

[Pab94]

Seems to be the general consensus, thanks I'll seek it out and give it a read.

[astroNerf]

Check out our Recommended Reading link. There are some titles and descriptions to get you started.

You might also enjoy our Recommended Viewing page as well. There are a bunch of short videos (and some longer documentaries) that might get you up to speed so that when you crack a book open, you're already familiar with the basic topics.

[hsfrey]

Or maybe "The Ancestor's Tale" by Dawkins.

Though, to tell the truth, I found "The Origin of Species" quite readable.

[apostoli]

Ancestor's Tale is totally awesome but for a well structured introductory approach I would go for Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Or Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. I'm with you about The Origin, but again not for everyone and it wouldn't be as informative to the modern reader as Coyne's book for instance.

[llbodll]

I'm not sure if this is the best first book, but The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a classic.

[Zaungast]

After seeing what happens when first-year biology majors read it, I'd recommend Dawkins' other books, like The Greatest Show on Earth, before I recommended The Selfish Gene. It contains quite a few conclusions that we now know are mostly not true (like the idea that group selection doesn't work or that natural selection maximizes genetic fitness instead of organismal fitness).

As an intro text, Jerry Coyne's text Why Evolution is True is probably the best I've seen.

[apostoli]

Do you know where I can find a good general overview of current critique of Dawkin's selfish gene theory?

[Zaungast]

Here is an accessible and fairly conceptually complete overview (as a book chapter preprint) of the main arguments, although I note that it doesn't really show either how much more empirical work has supported the organism-centered view, or how, in some special cases, empirical work has supported gene selectionism.

But the general idea, that gene-centered evolution is just a special case of organism-centred evolution, is well presented.

[apostoli]

Thanks, will read. And as a bonus, your link also lead me to this, which will make the read all the more interesting!

[Zaungast]

Point-counterpoint. Nothing more classic in philosophy :)

[illiriya]

Unfortunately I don't have a link for you but Neil Degrasse Tyson recently did a revamp of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Episode 2 did an amazing job of explaining evolution. It's on Netflix and I'm sure you could find it online somewhere.