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A Reason for Everything,Used
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"A Reason for Everything" is a brilliant and surprising fusion of science and biography. It is a very human book about the Englishness of evolutionary theory and the lives and personalities often eccentric and controversial of those who made it. The idea of evolution by natural selection was first announced in Britain, and it has, until recently, been defended in Britain more passionately than anywhere else. At the heart of the theory is the notion of adaptation to the environment. When 'adaptationists' look at living creatures, they believe that each of their features has a purpose, for which it has been shaped by selection. They tend to assume that there is, actually, a reason for everything. And for scientists after Darwin, that has been an extremely productive assumption. A number of thinkers developed this idea to levels of sophistication undreamed of in Darwin's time. The most important were Ronald Aylmer Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, John Maynard Smith, Bill Hamilton and Richard Dawkins. Kohn writes with great insight about the families and the universities that helped shape these men, and about their politics, which ranged from the far right to the Communist Party. Fisher was a practising Christian; Dawkins is a famously militant atheist. Some were notoriously difficult and eccentric as people; their feuds often were (and are) stormy. He opens the book with a deft and moving portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's contemporary and generous rival. "A Reason for Everything" is about far more than a narrow argument within biology. It is about Britain and natural history, butterflies and snails, impassioned beliefs and ideological struggles. Kohn writes with quiet humour and sympathy about how each of these individuals responded to a chilling and inspiring vision of nature.
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