Menno Schilthuizen
Review of What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr [excerpts from Science]
The excerpts below are from the issue of Science for January 4, 2002.

A Grand Old Synthesizer's Overview
A review by Menno Schilthuizen*
What Evolution Is 
Ernst Mayr
Basic Books, New York, 2001. 336 pp. $26, C$39.50. ISBN 0-465-04425-5

*The author is at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation,
Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Locked Bag 2073, 88999 Kota Kinabalu,
Malaysia.
E-mail: schilthuizen@excite.com.au 
...
What Evolution Is, his latest book, aims to be "a primer on evolution
for the general reader." Given Mayr's status as the grand old man in the
field, such a goal raises high expectations. 
In some respects, the book lives up to these expectations; in others, it
disappoints. To offer an overview of such a large and diverse subject
within the space of less than 300 pages of text, Mayr draws mainly on his
earlier writings. These are condensed; stripped of most references, examples,
and illustrations; and usually updated with modern insights. Unfortunately,
the result often makes for rather boring reading. Fascinating subjects such
as isolating mechanisms (the structures and behaviors that prevent
different species from hybridizing), which were so brilliantly treated in Animal
Species and Evolution, are here dealt with in abstract terms in a page
or less. Although Mayr succeeds at being complete but succinct, his
approach leaves little space for illustrative examples. For the general reader,
Mayr's account may have leapt to life more frequently if he had
sacrificed completeness for attractiveness. 
Another element that may pose an obstacle to the intended audience is
the occasionally polemic style. Evolutionary biology is a discipline rife
with controversy, and over his many years of writing, Mayr has adopted the
habit of weaving into his accounts defenses (and sometimes offenses) aimed at
his critics. In academic literature, this style is often an effective means
of proving a point. However, for the naďve layperson, unfamiliar with the
various evolutionary "camps," the small kicks and punches (aimed at, for
example, Paterson's recognition species concept and Kimura's view of
neutral evolution) that dot the text may be only puzzling. 
To his credit, Mayr has attempted to bring most of the sections in the
book up to date with new data. For example, the recently amassed
paleontological data on the evolution of whales and their relatives are brought in to
illustrate the fossil evidence for evolution. He even generously
acknowledges the existence of sympatric speciation (the splitting of
species without prior geographical isolation), a concept he once vehemently
opposed. In discussing this process, he cites celebrated examples from the
cichlid fish of crater lakes in Cameroon and host-specific herbivorous insects,
studies that gained prominence in the 1990s. 
Still, such modernizations are only implemented where they fit within
one of Mayr's familiar themes. Disciplines that emerged after the 1970s are
largely ignored. About transposons and other selfish genetic elements--the study
of which is now a burgeoning field full of implications for speciation,
sexual selection, and phylogenetics--Mayr says it is "not clear whether the
phenomenon is widespread." Sexual selection by female choice, another
relatively recent field, which has enjoyed substantial empirical and
theoretical advances, gets only six lines. 
Among the more interesting parts of the book are the two appendices.
Mayr offers these, in part, to lend a helping hand to evolutionists who find
themselves facing creationism or just plain ignorance as well as to
creationists who may "simply want to know more about the current
paradigm of evolutionary science if for no other reason than to be better able to
argue against it." Here, Mayr gives answers that will be as infuriating to
creationists as the questions--"Is evolution a fact?" "How can we prove
evolution if we cannot do experiments?"--themselves are to
evolutionists. 
In summary,  What Evolution Is is an interesting and important book
because Ernst Mayr is an interesting and important scientist. The work also
offers historians of biology a view of how Mayr, who shaped evolutionary
biology during the 20th century, views the state of the field at the start of
the 21st. However, the book's cursory style and neglect of major new
developments make me doubt that it will be, as the author intended, the
evolution text for the educated public.

POWRÓT