Evolution book contains “fanciful speculations”
A (very) short history of life on Earth (288 pp.) is the latest book on evolution by Senior Editor of Nature journal Henry Gee.
Welcoming Gee’s telling of “the 4-billion-year story of life on this planet”, a review of the book in Science journal praises the author’s “dramatic flair”. However, it laments that the book “largely refrains, however, from discussing the mechanisms and agents of evolution”. (A fundamental evolutionary challenge that, as creationists often point out, is glossed over by evolution texts.)
Furthermore, the Science review’s sharpest criticism is that Gee’s “unbridled enthusiasm” leads him to “downplay some scientific uncertainties in the interest of storytelling.” Indeed, in the book’s endnotes Gee admits to weaving in his own “fanciful speculations”.
This is the same Henry Gee, by the way, who in 2011 commented in Nature: “We have all seen the canonical parade of apes each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line up is nonsense. Yet we cling to it.”
- Yanai, I. and Lercher, M., Iterations of evolution—A paleontologist’s history of life highlights the recurring role played by geological, climatic, and atmospheric forces, Science 374(6569):828, 12 Nov 2021.
- Gee, H., Palaeoanthropology: Craniums with clout, Nature 478:34, 6 Oct 2011.
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