De la contraportada:
With rare clarity, Mayr poses the questions at the heart of evolution-What is the evidence for evolution on earth? What is the origin and role of organic diversity?-and describes in refreshingly nontechnical language how the search for answers has over the years revealed solutions to the most challenging problems posed by evolutionary theory. In a provocative final section, Mayr considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man.
Y Scientific American dice:
What the reader gets from this giant in the field of evolutionary biology is a fine basic account of the developing understanding of evolution from ancient times to the present. Mayr presents a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology as well as confronting the reductionist approach that tries to focus all evolutionary phenomena on the gene; he shows instead that evolution must consider two crucial units–the individual and populations. Mayr, professor emeritus of zoology at Harvard University, asserts that the term «evolutionary theory» should be abandoned. Evolution, he says, «is a fact so overwhelmingly established that it has become irrational to call it a theory.»
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