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A review by matthewb
Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo by Sean B. Carroll
4.0
Every so often a book comes along that completely blows you away. This is one such book. I first heard about this book from Tim Blais’ A Cappella Science video, which is in itself a superlative work of art. I bought this book to better understand the concepts presented in that video.
When I first learned about the details of DNA in school I was enraptured by how simple but incredibly powerful DNA replication is. This book rekindled that feeling of awe as it explained the beauty of evolution and the fundamentally simple mechanisms that make it all possible: genetic switches, tool-kit genes and Hox proteins that govern the development of embryonic form.
The book is replete with interesting case studies and examples of evolution, such as the fact that gills were repurposed in ingenious ways to form everything from insect wings to spider spinnerets, the independent evolution of wings in insects, pterodactyls, birds and bats, and the way animal coat colourings spread outward from the neural crest along the spine, often causing lighter colours underneath on the belly and providing a clue for how the zebra got its stripes.
There is so much more in the book and I’m sure I would benefit from repeat readings. Carroll’s writing is well-pitched, being both challenging and accessible. He does a great job bringing the beauty and wonder of evolution to the fore.
That said, I am only giving it four out of five stars because of the omission of colour plates in the soft-cover book. In a book about beauty and diversity, where the image captions repeatedly draw attention to the “exquisite” colors and varying shades in detailed close-up photographs, the greyscale photos are a significant editorial flaw. The fact that the “colour” illustrations are central to the points being made in the text makes it even more maddening when it is impossible to distinguish between greens and blues and reds. I tweeted the publisher and the author about it but got no reply.
The book requires some effort to grasp the details of the ideas presented and it is challenging to a degree. This is perhaps a hindrance in getting the evolutionary worldview accepted by those who actively oppose it, particularly in America, as short answers are rarely possible and a firm scientific foundation is needed. The book finishes off with a fairly reasonable assessment of the challenges faced by the scientific community and science educators to spread the discoveries of Evo Devo to society at large. The author suggests that, like all major scientific paradigm shifts, these new ideas will be accepted slowly through generational displacement. So for those already convinced of these advances and frustrated with society’s intransigence we can be sure that truth and beauty will ultimately carry the day.
Overall I highly recommend this book, but I would caution against the soft-cover edition.
When I first learned about the details of DNA in school I was enraptured by how simple but incredibly powerful DNA replication is. This book rekindled that feeling of awe as it explained the beauty of evolution and the fundamentally simple mechanisms that make it all possible: genetic switches, tool-kit genes and Hox proteins that govern the development of embryonic form.
The book is replete with interesting case studies and examples of evolution, such as the fact that gills were repurposed in ingenious ways to form everything from insect wings to spider spinnerets, the independent evolution of wings in insects, pterodactyls, birds and bats, and the way animal coat colourings spread outward from the neural crest along the spine, often causing lighter colours underneath on the belly and providing a clue for how the zebra got its stripes.
There is so much more in the book and I’m sure I would benefit from repeat readings. Carroll’s writing is well-pitched, being both challenging and accessible. He does a great job bringing the beauty and wonder of evolution to the fore.
That said, I am only giving it four out of five stars because of the omission of colour plates in the soft-cover book. In a book about beauty and diversity, where the image captions repeatedly draw attention to the “exquisite” colors and varying shades in detailed close-up photographs, the greyscale photos are a significant editorial flaw. The fact that the “colour” illustrations are central to the points being made in the text makes it even more maddening when it is impossible to distinguish between greens and blues and reds. I tweeted the publisher and the author about it but got no reply.
The book requires some effort to grasp the details of the ideas presented and it is challenging to a degree. This is perhaps a hindrance in getting the evolutionary worldview accepted by those who actively oppose it, particularly in America, as short answers are rarely possible and a firm scientific foundation is needed. The book finishes off with a fairly reasonable assessment of the challenges faced by the scientific community and science educators to spread the discoveries of Evo Devo to society at large. The author suggests that, like all major scientific paradigm shifts, these new ideas will be accepted slowly through generational displacement. So for those already convinced of these advances and frustrated with society’s intransigence we can be sure that truth and beauty will ultimately carry the day.
Overall I highly recommend this book, but I would caution against the soft-cover edition.