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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
This book was certainly interesting. However, it did contain a great deal of information on current research in sexual selection and at times was rather hard to follow. I found the chapter on monogamy/polygamy particularly hard to follow.
This is not a bad read but is one you have to concentrate on - not one which you can read while watching telly for example.
This is not a bad read but is one you have to concentrate on - not one which you can read while watching telly for example.
challenging
informative
medium-paced
funny
informative
medium-paced
Starts strong for 2 chapters, then it's 6 chapters of the densest information I've ever read. Ridley's strength really comes through when he's snarky, but his humourous tone just drops to info-load you. The writing is good, and I learnt a lot - can't say I agree with all of it (or that I'm smart enough to argue against it!). Honestly, Ridley made most of it interesting and coherent.
This is not a book about biology. It's a book about philosophy. I see the "red queen" concept everywhere. Business, marketing, investing, jokes, everything.
Pop up ads. When they started in the early 2000s. People clicked on them. Same for "You've WON!" Ads with flashing yellow and red text. Now, who clicks on pop ups? Noone. Marketing and scammy ads have moved on. The world appears to move forward by leaps and bounds, but in many senses we are in exactly the same place. Not exactly the most profound realization, but an important one to me nonetheless.
Change and innovation are constant necessities for a fruitful life.
Pop up ads. When they started in the early 2000s. People clicked on them. Same for "You've WON!" Ads with flashing yellow and red text. Now, who clicks on pop ups? Noone. Marketing and scammy ads have moved on. The world appears to move forward by leaps and bounds, but in many senses we are in exactly the same place. Not exactly the most profound realization, but an important one to me nonetheless.
Change and innovation are constant necessities for a fruitful life.
This is the kind of book that I read when I was 14-15 and fascinated by evolution and human evolution especially. It was fun to go back and read a new book that addressed a lot of those themes, while at the same time adding things that I either don't remember or weren't present in the books I read back then. This was a good look, in my opinion, at the different viewpoints on evolution and how it happened (and why it happened).
I'm conflicted on how to rate this book overall. It certainly has some great ideas but at the same time it's cripplingly incomprehensible at times, and woefully short of explanation when it needs it, and needlessly expansive in other places.
Riddley 's clear exploration of the many theories on why sex might have evolved is a great set of chapters. He clearly states the merits and demerits of the important ones, and you're a convert to the theory he believes in (that sex evolved as a mechanism to combat parasites). I found his paragraphs on sexual selection, and polygamy to be heavy going though, for reasons stated above. He finishes with a flourish however when he states that the human brain might be a product of sexual rather than natural selection. I'd picked up this book to read more on this, but it doesn't have too much on the subject.
Overall, a good introduction, but the book is too un-rigorously written for my taste.
Riddley 's clear exploration of the many theories on why sex might have evolved is a great set of chapters. He clearly states the merits and demerits of the important ones, and you're a convert to the theory he believes in (that sex evolved as a mechanism to combat parasites). I found his paragraphs on sexual selection, and polygamy to be heavy going though, for reasons stated above. He finishes with a flourish however when he states that the human brain might be a product of sexual rather than natural selection. I'd picked up this book to read more on this, but it doesn't have too much on the subject.
Overall, a good introduction, but the book is too un-rigorously written for my taste.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced