Description
Book SynopsisBy focusing on the crucial role of environment in the process of adaptation, Robert Brandon clarifies definitions and principles so as to help make the argument of evolution by natural selection empirically testable. He proposes that natural selection is the process of differential reproduction resulting from differential adaptedness to a common se
Trade ReviewWinner of the 1996 Award for Excellence in Design and Production in Professional/Scholarly Publishing, Association of American Publishers "Brandon's book is useful because it focuses on natural selection and adaptation, two concepts central to evolutionary and ecologic studies... He is genuinely interested in how these concepts can be used to understand evolution, and, more importantly, explain the phenomena we observe in our organisms."--American Journal of Physical Anthropology "Brandon's book is useful because it focuses on natural selection and adaptation, two concepts central to evolutionary and ecologic studies... He is genuinely interested in how these concepts can be used to understand evolution, and, more importantly, explain the phenomena we observe in our organisms."--R. Z. German, American Journal of Physical Anthropology "Throughout this book, Brandon sustains an in-depth reflection on the concepts associated with this fundamental theory of evolutionary biology... Brandon thus gives to the principle of natural selection a universal explanatory power, insisting on the fact that even if they give the impression of answering teleological questions, the different stages of the 'adaptationist explanation' turn up nothing but mechanist processes."--L. Granjon, Mammalia
Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. v*PREFACE, pg. vii*ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. xi*CHAPTER 1. Adaptation and Natural Selection, pg. 3*CHAPTER 2. The Concept of Environment in the Theory of Natural Selection, pg. 45*CHAPTER 3. The Levels of Selection, pg. 78*CHAPTER 4. The Structure of the Theory of Natural Selection, pg. 134*CHAPTER 5. Mechanism and Teleology, pg. 159*REFERENCES, pg. 195*INDEX, pg. 207
