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YOUR ARTICLE WAS A REFRESHING LOOK at the new discoveries related to evolution [COVER STORY, Dec. 4]. Darwin's theory is regarded by many as the best explanation of the evolution of life on this planet and is not questioned by most people. Biology classes teach Darwinian theory as one that is basically accepted by scientists. I was surprised and excited to see the idea of sudden bursts of evolution brought into public discussion. These are legitimate possibilities, presented by the explosion of biological diversity, that do not fit nicely into Darwin's theory. I had studied them...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Letters, Dec. 25, 1995 | 12/25/1995 | See Source »

...more scientists struggle to explain the Cambrian explosion, the more singular it seems. And just as the peculiar behavior of light forced physicists to conclude that Newton's laws were incomplete, so the Cambrian explosion has caused experts to wonder if the twin Darwinian imperatives of genetic variation and natural selection provide an adequate framework for understanding evolution. "What Darwin described in the Origin of Species," observes Queen's University paleontologist Narbonne, "was the steady background kind of evolution. But there also seems to be a non-Darwinian kind of evolution that functions over extremely short time periods - and that...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: When Life Exploded | 12/4/1995 | See Source »

...some ways misleading. Though strife does pervade primitive societies, much of the striving is subtler than a club fight. Our ancestors, it seems, competed for mates with guile and hard work. They competed for social status with combative wordplay and social politicking. And this competition, however subtle, had Darwinian consequences. Anthropologists have shown, for example, that hunter-gatherer males successful in status competition have better luck in mating and thus getting genes into the next generation...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: THE EVOLUTION OF DESPAIR | 8/28/1995 | See Source »

...ancestral environment, measuring ourselves against fellow villagers and usually finding at least one facet of life where we excel. But now we compare our lives with "the fantasy lives we see on television," Nesse writes in the recent book Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, written with the eminent evolutionary biologist George Williams. "Our own wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters can seem profoundly inadequate by comparison. So we are dissatisfied with them and even more dissatisfied with ourselves." (And, apparently, with our standard of living. During the 1950s, various American cities...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: THE EVOLUTION OF DESPAIR | 8/28/1995 | See Source »

...having knowked down all opponentsto Darwinism, Dennett fails to make a strong casefor a Darwinian morality. maybe we aren't . justmachines for eating and reproducing; but where dowe go from there? Are we consigned to a sterilerelativism, or is some more normative ethicspossible? The title of the chapter "The MoralFirst Aid Manual" should give some indication:Dennett sees the process of moral reasoning asessentially chaotic and endless, and he valuesmoral rules simply as semi-arbitrary ways ofending a moral deliberation. He has no deepcommitment to any principle, but merely wants aresult, and it doesn't seem to much matter whatthat...

Author: By Adam Kirsch, | Title: Book Champions Theory of Evolution | 6/8/1995 | See Source »

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