The Major Transitions in Evolution

Rating:
Summary: Evolution: the Really Big Picture
Review: In this book, John Maynard Smith and Eoers Szathmary give a discussion of the steps (transitions) involved in the evolution of life, from the very beginning to complex human societies. This they do in a book of only about 300 pages. The detailed explanations of many of these transitions are necessarily speculative: still it is an interesting exercise to try and give a complete description of the history of the world of life.

The world the authors describe is totally, well, Darwinian. Many transitions like the origin of organelles and of meiosis involve some form of cooperation, but cooperation could be the result of wins and losses in evolutionary power struggles. For instance, talking about the origin of the eukaryotic cells the authors speculate: "Proto-metakaryotic host cells may have kept protomytochondria as humans keep pigs [...] Thus we are inclined to think that endosymbiotic organelles are encapsulated slaves."

This quote also illustrates the fact that this book, while easy for somebody with a good understanding of undergraduate biology, is not for everyone. For the target audience, this book is not difficult: the game-theoretic models are simply explained and there is basically no other math.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Industrial strength for biological initiates.
Review: John Maynard Smith gets an automatic thumbs-up from me for anything he writes. He is clear, pleasant, creative, unpretentious, authoritative and thoughtful. For this book he has teamed up with what seems to be an up-and-coming molecular biologist cum evolutionist and the team is impressively powerful. The writing is all in Maynard-Smith's style as far as I can tell, so I don't know whether Szathmary is an exceptionally competent anglophone who shares the same style, or whether they split the writing duties to exploit their respective skills. All I can say is that if you want a really rewarding read and you have a sound, not necessarily advanced, understanding of the basics of biochemistry, evolution and cellular physiology, then you cannot do better than this book. It makes no pretence to being comprehensive and gives only the minimum of introductory material to support their views on evolutionary transitions. Even if you are familiar with the field, the book does not lend itself to skimming; it is the distillation of a lot of non-trivial thinking.

An excellent book. Recommended to any professional in the field, to any student of the subject and to laymen with a good background in the subject and who are not intimidated by a challenge and are willing to skip some of the biochemistry. The later chapters are more accessible in that they deal with more difficult subjects, such as speech and culture.

Instead of watering down the content for educated laymen, the authors have published a less technical sequel: "The Origins of Life". This is also available from Amazon and, although it is intended for a wider audience, it is thoroughly rewarding for the professional.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Industrial strength for biological initiates.
Review: John Maynard Smith gets an automatic thumbs-up from me for anything he writes. He is clear, pleasant, creative, unpretentious, authoritative and thoughtful. For this book he has teamed up with what seems to be an up-and-coming molecular biologist cum evolutionist and the team is impressively powerful. The writing is all in Maynard-Smith's style as far as I can tell, so I don't know whether Szathmary is an exceptionally competent anglophone who shares the same style, or whether they split the writing duties to exploit their respective skills. All I can say is that if you want a really rewarding read and you have a sound, not necessarily advanced, understanding of the basics of biochemistry, evolution and cellular physiology, then you cannot do better than this book. It makes no pretence to being comprehensive and gives only the minimum of introductory material to support their views on evolutionary transitions. Even if you are familiar with the field, the book does not lend itself to skimming; it is the distillation of a lot of non-trivial thinking.

An excellent book. Recommended to any professional in the field, to any student of the subject and to laymen with a good background in the subject and who are not intimidated by a challenge and are willing to skip some of the biochemistry. The later chapters are more accessible in that they deal with more difficult subjects, such as speech and culture.

Instead of watering down the content for educated laymen, the authors have published a less technical sequel: "The Origins of Life". This is also available from Amazon and, although it is intended for a wider audience, it is thoroughly rewarding for the professional.

Rating:
Summary: A Marvellous and Challenging Read
Review: This is arguably John-Maynard Smith's most challenging project in popular science writing. Written along with Eros Szathmary, a chemist, " The Major Transitions in Evolution" is written primarily for biology students, but can be understood by anybody with a solid background in evolutionary theory. How have the ways in which information is transmitted between generations changed through time and what were the crucial transitions that made these changes possible? One early example that illustrates the effect of these transitions is the origin of chromosomes. Nucleic acid strands (genes) capable of independent replication, at some point became linked and thereafter could replicate only as a set of lined genes (chromosomes). A new way of storing information,a new information system had evolved. How was this transition maintained through time? Would'nt unlinked genes which replicate faster be favoured by natural selection over linked genes? In effect, would'nt selection at a lower level disrupt higher level organizatins? This is a common feature of many of the major transitions and forms the fundamental theme of this marvellous book. In a series of chapters the authors discuss the evolutions of various level of complexity. The chapters are arrange in a logical sequence begining with the origin of life and moving on to successive transitions including the origin of the genetic code, the origin of the eucaryotes, the origin of sex, multicellularity, societies and language. The list here is not complete. I read the book from start to finish in a sequence, but readers with a good background in the subject could probably start anywhere depending on their interest. For non-biologist this is not easy reading at all, and I would imagine that even biology students will find portions challenging. An impressive quality of this book is the constant attempt to incorporate the pecularities of a particular system in developing an explanation to explain its origin. A discussion on the origin of the genetic code includes the possibilty that there could be a stero-chemical basis for specific amino acid-codon assigments, rather than it being a 'frozen accident'. Another example is whether there is a causal connection between haplodiploidy and evolution of sociality in eusocial insects. The author warn against making this apparently intuitive connection, and instead seek an explanation in split sex ratios and in some cases the particular features of insect ecology. The highlight of the book for me was the last chapter on the origin of language. From Noam Chomsky's work on the structure of grammer , syntax and language and representation, to an evolutionary explanation for its origin, this was really an informative essay. The ever recurring argument against the evolution of complex adapatations, in this case language, by a series of adaptive intermediate stages, has been dealt with using examples from animal speech, the genetics of language disorders and a section on the transitions from pigdin to creole. The book strikes a good balance between explaining theory and then discussing the experimental evidence available. Wherever possible, new experimental approaches are suggested. Finally, like any really good book on science the authors not only bring you up to date with what has been done, but also stress just how much more needs to be done. It is this feature about the book that leaves a lasting impression.

Rating:
Summary: A Marvellous and Challenging Read
Review: This is arguably John-Maynard Smith's most challenging project in popular science writing. Written along with Eros Szathmary, a chemist, " The Major Transitions in Evolution" is written primarily for biology students, but can be understood by anybody with a solid background in evolutionary theory. How have the ways in which information is transmitted between generations changed through time and what were the crucial transitions that made these changes possible? One early example that illustrates the effect of these transitions is the origin of chromosomes. Nucleic acid strands (genes) capable of independent replication, at some point became linked and thereafter could replicate only as a set of lined genes (chromosomes). A new way of storing information,a new information system had evolved. How was this transition maintained through time? Would'nt unlinked genes which replicate faster be favoured by natural selection over linked genes? In effect, would'nt selection at a lower level disrupt higher level organizatins? This is a common feature of many of the major transitions and forms the fundamental theme of this marvellous book. In a series of chapters the authors discuss the evolutions of various level of complexity. The chapters are arrange in a logical sequence begining with the origin of life and moving on to successive transitions including the origin of the genetic code, the origin of the eucaryotes, the origin of sex, multicellularity, societies and language. The list here is not complete. I read the book from start to finish in a sequence, but readers with a good background in the subject could probably start anywhere depending on their interest. For non-biologist this is not easy reading at all, and I would imagine that even biology students will find portions challenging. An impressive quality of this book is the constant attempt to incorporate the pecularities of a particular system in developing an explanation to explain its origin. A discussion on the origin of the genetic code includes the possibilty that there could be a stero-chemical basis for specific amino acid-codon assigments, rather than it being a 'frozen accident'. Another example is whether there is a causal connection between haplodiploidy and evolution of sociality in eusocial insects. The author warn against making this apparently intuitive connection, and instead seek an explanation in split sex ratios and in some cases the particular features of insect ecology. The highlight of the book for me was the last chapter on the origin of language. From Noam Chomsky's work on the structure of grammer , syntax and language and representation, to an evolutionary explanation for its origin, this was really an informative essay. The ever recurring argument against the evolution of complex adapatations, in this case language, by a series of adaptive intermediate stages, has been dealt with using examples from animal speech, the genetics of language disorders and a section on the transitions from pigdin to creole. The book strikes a good balance between explaining theory and then discussing the experimental evidence available. Wherever possible, new experimental approaches are suggested. Finally, like any really good book on science the authors not only bring you up to date with what has been done, but also stress just how much more needs to be done. It is this feature about the book that leaves a lasting impression.