John O. Reiss
Not by Design: Retiring Darwin's Watchmaker

Berkeley: University of California Press
$49.95, £34.95 hardcover

ISBN: 978-0-520-25893-8

440 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 16 line illustrations, 10 tables
August 2009

More than two centuries ago, William Paley introduced his famous
metaphor of the universe as a watch made by the Creator. For Paley, the
exquisite structure of the universe necessitated a designer. Today, some
150 years since Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, the
argument of design is seeing a revival. This provocative work tells how
Darwin left the door open for this revival--and at the same time argues
for a new conceptual framework that avoids the problematic teleology
inherent in Darwin's formulation of natural selection. In a wide-ranging
discussion of the historical and philosophical dimensions of
evolutionary theory from the ancient Greeks to today, John Reiss argues
that we should look to the principle of the conditions for existence,
first formulated before On the Origin of Species by the French
paleontologist Georges Cuvier, to clarify the relation of adaptation to
evolution. Reiss suggests that Cuvier's principle can help resolve
persistent issues in evolutionary biology, including the proper
definition of natural selection, the distinction between natural
selection and genetic drift, and the meaning of genetic load. Moreover,
he shows how this principle can help unite diverse areas of biology,
ranging from quantitative genetics and the theory of the levels of
selection to evo-devo, ecology, physiology, and conservation biology.

 http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10573.php

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