Book reviewsReconstructing the evolutionary synthesisThe Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unificationof Biology (1998) Mayr E. Provine WB. (Eds). Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 504 pp. £13.50, $19.95 paperback;ISBN 0-674-27226-9

Reviewed byAdam S. WilkinsBioEssays Editorial OfficeCambridge, UK

The Neodarwinian theory of evolution, which serves as thebedrock set of ideas for most evolutionary biologists, isunusual amongst scientific theories both for its long gestationperiod, which spanned nearly three decades (from about1920 to 1950), and for its indeterminate time of birth. On theother hand, as a success story, it typifies a well-known fact,namely, that while failure is an orphan, success has manyfathers. In the case of Neodarwinian evolution, this is quiteliterally true: it was the cumulative result of the efforts of manyindividuals. The contributors were not only numerous butwere geographically dispersed. Nevertheless, one can iden-tify four countries as the principal well-springs of the evolution-ary synthesis: Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, andGermany. Given its long development, and multiple parentage, itis not surprising that much about its history was, and remains,obscure. By 1950, it was apparent that a comprehensive andconvincing modern theory of evolution—building on Darwin’sideas but compatible with Mendelian genetics, population genet-ics, systematics, and palaeontology—had come into existencebut it was far from clear exactly how this had taken place.

In 1974, two workshops, chaired by Professor Ernst Mayr,were held at Princeton University to try to sort out thiscomplex history; the first workshop was held in May, thesecond in October of that year. Both meetings included manyof the men—and the Evolutionary Synthesis does appear tobe a case in which there were many fathers and no mothers—who had made the Synthesis, as well as younger scientistsand philosophers and historians of science. Several of theelder statesmen of the field could not attend but, neverthe-less, participated by written submissions. Transcripts of thetalks were made and 6 years later, in 1980, the proceedings,edited by Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine, were publishedas a book by Harvard University Press. In 1998, nearly aquarter of a century after the original meetings, the book hasbeen re-issued with a new preface by Professor Mayr.

The book is the record of a unique gathering. Within ayear, several of the giants who had contributed to thediscussions as well as to the elaboration of the theory itself, inparticular Theodosius Dobzhansky and Julian Huxley, hadpassed from the scene. In some respects, the moment mayeven represent the high point of Neodarwinian theory. Al-though it remains the foundation for much in evolutionary

thought, there is much more contention in evolutionarybiology today about the relative importance of selection incertain kinds of evolutionary change and there is morediversity in the kinds of problems being addressed by evolu-tionary biologists. Inevitably, the material reveals nearly asmuch about how the participants viewed evolutionary theoryin 1974 as it does about how the theory gradually came intobeing during the first half of the twentieth century.

For anyone interested in the history of ideas in biology, thisbook is both a pleasure to read and a mine of usefulinformation. The bulk is divided into two main parts, the firstdevoted to how different fields contributed (or failed tocontribute) to the Synthesis, the second to how differentcountries and cultures contributed (or failed to). The book iscompleted by a third and smaller section, ‘‘Final consider-ations,’’ which begins with a few contributions that sum up theproceedings and identifies questions for future explorationand concludes with a small set of short biographies of someof the key figures in the history of the Synthesis.

For this reader, at least, there was not a single dull page oruninformative paragraph. Furthermore, its interest was enhancedby the sense of the ‘‘hidden agenda’’ of the workshops: to explodethe myth that the modern theory of evolution was simply Mende-lian genetics plus the population genetics theory of Fisher,Haldane, and Wright, grafted onto Charles Darwin’s ideas aboutnatural selection. This book accomplishes that mission well; thecontributions of systematics, of studies of natural populations ofanimals and plants, and of palaeontology were all clearly impor-tant in making the new theory a convincing one. Along the way,one learns many things. For me, one of the most interestingconcerned the contributions of the Russian school, headed bySergei Chetverikov, during the 1920s. Dobzhansky, who madehis key contributions in the United States, was a member of thatschool and had been shaped by it, but he was, by no means, itsonly significant figure. Equally intriguing were the chapters deal-ing with the relative failures of disciplines such as morphology anddevelopmental biology to contribute to evolutionary theory, in anysubstantial way, between 1920 and 1950. The cultural factors thatshaped the Synthesis, such as dialectical materialism in theSoviet Union of the 1920s, or retarded its formulation in certainplaces, such as the tradition of Lamarckianism in France, arebrought out in equally interesting fashion.

Many of the details, however, are as striking as the largerthemes. There is, for instance, Frederick Churchill’s descrip-tion of the amazing resilience of the biogenetic law of Haeckel. Itsimply refused to stay dead despite its repeated refutations, overa span of decades. Or Viktor Hamburger’s recounting of adiscussion between Driesch and T.H. Morgan in the 1890s, at theMarine Biological Research station in Naples, of Driesch’s idea ofreciprocal nuclear-cytoplasmic interactions influencing gene activ-ity. This idea was to surface in 1934 in Morgan’s book onembryology and genetics, in which Morgan, without attribution toDriesch, describes the idea of differential gene activity in this

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context. Or, as a third example, take this bit of discussion (oneof the few recorded interchanges in the book):

Richard Lewontin: ‘‘...You should not continue to per-form experiments whose interpretation is necessarilyambiguous.’’

Ernst Mayr: ‘‘What percentage of published work inpopulation genetics would be wiped out by your state-ment?’’

Richard Lewontin: ‘‘A very healthy percentage.’’

With any book devoted to scientific history, the questionimmediately arises: should the average working scientist,whose time is valuable, spend time reading this book insteadof, say, investing the same number of hours with his/herfavourite primary research journals? That, of course, will be amatter of personal taste. My belief is that some perspectiveon the past of one’s field is always helpful in moving it into thefuture. One gets a sense of what questions really have beensettled and, more importantly, how many, and which ones,remain live issues—and why.

And that thought brings me to my only discontent with thisbook, namely the new preface by Professor Mayr. When a book isre-issued, the author(s) or editor(s) usually feel that the book hasa new relevance or, at least, a continuing relevance, whichyounger scientists in particular would benefit from. AlthoughNeodarwinian theory of mid-century remains crucially importantto evolutionary biology today, the field has, as mentioned above,expanded and changed in certain respects. Twenty-five yearsafter the Princeton workshops, what is the particular reason forre-issuing this book? Does it have a new relevance, or do thepublishers simply want to increase their sales to individuals whowere too young in 1980 to know about it? Have any of thedevelopments of the last 25 years put a new light on any of thediscussions in 1974? I wish that Prof. Mayr had said somethingabout these matters in his new preface—I have no doubt that hehas thought about them. Instead, he simply emphasizes thetriumph of the Evolutionary Synthesis by mid-century and impliesthat it has vanquished a few upstart ideas that have surfaced inthe meantime. This combination of silence and triumphalism,however, is, at most, a small flaw in what was, and continues tobe, an invaluable book in the history of biological science and onethat is a credit to Professors Mayr and Provine.

A larger audience, a shorter lifeBehavioral Genetics (3rd edition, 1997) Plomin R, DeFriesJC, McClearn GE, Rutter M. San Francisco: WH Freemanand Co., 448 pp. £27.95 board; ISBN 0-7167-2824-9

Reviewed byElena L. GrigorenkoDepartment of PhysiologyYale UniversityNew Haven, Connecticut

Many factors determine the success of a textbook. Amongthese, two factors of considerable importance are the match

between the book and its intended audience and the degreeto which the book reflects the current state of the field. Theseare the two factors I want to concentrate on in this commen-tary on Behavioral Genetics (3rd edition) by Robert Plomin,John DeFries, Gerald McClearn, and Michael Rutter.

Compared with previous editions, this version of thetextbook, as the authors themselves acknowledge, is more asequel than a revision. The main outcome of this substantialmodification is an enhanced potential for increasing the sizeof the readership. This edition has addressed the primaryconcern raised about the previous revisions, namely, theoverly limited nature of the target audience. The 1980 and1990 editions, as encyclopedic dictionaries rather than text-books, were accessible to a relatively narrow audience ofstudents already equipped with substantial knowledge ofstatistics, psychology, and genetics, and, most importantly,already motivated to study behavioral genetics. One wouldturn to Behavioral Genetics in its previous editions mostly forsome specialized item of knowledge that could not be foundin either a psychology or a genetics textbook. In other words,previous editions were neither self-sufficient (to understandthem, one needed to know basic psychology and basicgenetics) nor self-motivating (one needed to have someprevious knowledge about both the importance of the method-ology of behavioral genetics and the wider research contextin which this methodology was applicable). Thus, previouseditions were rather difficult to use as the main textbook inspecialized psychology (or genetics) courses because theyassumed significant previous knowledge as well as greatermotivation and a broader contextual vision than beginningbehavior-genetics students usually have.

The decision to turn Behavioral Genetics into a topic-oriented rather than a methodology-oriented textbook wasboth winning and risk-taking. The 3rd edition transformed thetext into a self-motivating narrative which, though it stillassumes a significant amount of specialized backgroundknowledge, contains enough of a story to encourage thestudents to keep going and hunt for missing pieces ofinformation. And these missing pieces can easily be found ina dozen books [e.g., Human genetics: problems and ap-proaches (F. Vogel and A.G. Motulsky, 1997), Introduction toquantitative genetics (D.S. Flaconer and T.F.C. Mackay,1996), Methodology for genetic studies of twins and families(M.C. Neale and L.R. Cardon, 1992)]. Behavioral Genetics isdesigned as a textbook for psychologists, and although manypsychology students will find the book difficult, it now providesenough context to convince them of the importance ofovercoming these obstacles of understanding. The mainvictory of the 3rd edition is its capacity for capturing thereaders’ attention and keeping it hostage till the very last pageby motivating the readers, by providing the larger context ofthe specialized behavioral-genetic knowledge, and by puttingthis knowledge in the context of the broader field of psychol-

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