New Scientist - The Essential Guides

The Essential Guide series brings together the best recent coverage from New Scientist specially curated into beautiful compendiums about the most exciting themes in science and technology today. Written and edited by some of the world’s best science writers, these guides will leave you with everything you need to know about subjects from nutrition to the solar system and more.

EVOLUTION

New Scientist - The Essential Guides

HOW EVOLUTION BEGAN

ON THE ORIGIN OF EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION BEFORE DARWIN

WHO WAS CHARLES DARWIN?

AN IDEA OF ITS TIME • Many strands of 19th century science, from concern about how a burgeoning human population could support itself to the discovery of strange fossils of long-dead animals, led Darwin and others to ideas about how species arise, evolve and go extinct

EVOLUTION VS CREATION: THE GREAT 1860 DEBATE • Darwin’s ideas were always going to cause controversy among those who championed a literal interpretation of the biblical story of creation. That first came to head in a notorious debate in Oxford, the year after On the Origin of Species was published, in which evolution’s most fervent adherent, Thomas Huxley, went head to head with the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce.

DARWIN’S EVOLUTION

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, REVISITED

EVOLUTION IN A NUTSHELL

EVOLUTION ALL AROUND US • Although the basic ideas of variation, inheritance and selection underpinning On the Origin of Species are simple, their consequences are complex and profound. But evidence for evolutionary processes – for competition, adaptation and speciation – can be found everywhere in the natural world.

GENETICS AND EVOLUTION

DARWIN AND DNA

GREGOR MENDEL AND THE BIRTH OF GENETICS

THE EVOLUTION OF GENETICS • The idea that species pass characteristics down through generations long predates Gregor Mendel’s 19th-century studies of pea plants. But it was only with the discovery of DNA as the vehicle of heredity in the mid-20th century that modern genetics began to take off

HOW GENETIC INHERITANCE WORKS • Mendel’s work established the foundations for the modern field of genetics, but in the mid-20th century we began to understand its biochemical basis: how traits are encoded in DNA and passed from generation to generation.

EVOLUTION MYTHS

MYTH: EVOLUTION’S OUTCOMES ARE IMPLAUSIBLY UNLIKELY • Confronted with the marvels of the living world, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion they cannot be the result of chance alone. But in fact, by harmful mutations and assembling beneficial ones, natural selection can over time produce results that appear utterly impossible at first glance.

MYTH: EVOLUTION IS ENTIRELY RANDOM • Just because the underlying process of genetic mutation is random doesn’t mean the evolution’s outcomes are. Natural selection is a rigorous testing process that filters out what works from what doesn’t, driving organisms to evolve in particular directions.

MYTH: EVOLUTION IS JUST SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST • A phenomenon known as genetic drift working on the massively parallel mutations that underlie evolution means another process beyond natural selection kicks in: survival of the luckiest.

MYTH: EVOLUTION ALWAYS PROMOTES SPECIES SURVIVAL • “Survival of the fittest” can in fact be an entirely misleading description of evolutionary change: evolution sometimes results in initially well-adapted individuals or populations becoming less fit, and even occasionally going extinct.

MYTH: EVOLUTION ALWAYS FAVOURS COMPLEXITY • “Use it or lose it” is a mantra that applies readily in the processes of evolution – when there’s little selective pressure to become more complex, organisms can often seem to go backwards in what they are capable of.

MYTH: EVOLUTION MAKES PERFECTLY ADAPTED LIFE...