A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed “the taste for the beautiful”—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.
In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction...
A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed “the taste for the beautiful”—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.
In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature?
Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin’s own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change.
Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time.
The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature’s splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.
作者简介
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Richard O. Prum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He has conducted field work throughout the world, and has studied fossil theropod dinosaurs in China. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.
Lots of people indulge in their irrational desires for meaningful explanations of our chaotic world, often in ways that are so mainstream that it never occurs to us to wonder about their validity. For example, an entire industry of business news provides continuous explanations of what’s going on in economic marketplaces when in all likelihood there is absolutely nothing special going on most of the time. Business news channels broadcast an endless stream of financial reports about “events” in global financial markets. They confidently explain that the Hang Seng Index is up, or the London FTSE is down, or Dow futures are unchanged because of the latest unemployment report, negotiated sovereign debt settlement, or quarterly profit reports. Of course, the null hypothesis is that market acti... (查看原文)
After years of struggling against Grafen’s abundant proof standard, I came to realize that the field of evolutionary biology had become like the financial market news reports. Evolutionary biologists have become convinced that a special kind of rhyme and reason—adaptive mate choice—must be happening everywhere and all the time. Why are they so convinced? When you examine it, it is mostly just a belief that the world must be that way. Remember, in rejecting Darwinian mate choice, Wallace asserted as a matter of principle that “natural selection acts perpetually and on an enormous scale.” The intellectual justification remains largely unchanged. (查看原文)
这本书从很多方面来说都和from bacteria to Bach and back很像。并非所有的trait都是自然选择，有性选择也有社会选择也发挥了作用。有些trait留下来并非好到适者生存，而是没有坏到不适生存。性选择主要的驱动力是女性自主权。按照Dennett的说法也许是competence without comprehension。但是读完后依旧会觉得有些理论证据是对方理论的不足之处，...这本书从很多方面来说都和from bacteria to Bach and back很像。并非所有的trait都是自然选择，有性选择也有社会选择也发挥了作用。有些trait留下来并非好到适者生存，而是没有坏到不适生存。性选择主要的驱动力是女性自主权。按照Dennett的说法也许是competence without comprehension。但是读完后依旧会觉得有些理论证据是对方理论的不足之处，但没有自己的证明证据。我读这本书的时候很开心，但对从生物学里面moralizing始终感到矛盾。(展开)
The idea that independent and sometimes conflicting forces may shape the evolutionary process makes the theory far more subtle and convincing than the simple principle of survival of the fittest.
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中信出版社2019版
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0 有用 bks 2018-05-16 02:13:45
这本书从很多方面来说都和from bacteria to Bach and back很像。并非所有的trait都是自然选择，有性选择也有社会选择也发挥了作用。有些trait留下来并非好到适者生存，而是没有坏到不适生存。性选择主要的驱动力是女性自主权。按照Dennett的说法也许是competence without comprehension。但是读完后依旧会觉得有些理论证据是对方理论的不足之处，... 这本书从很多方面来说都和from bacteria to Bach and back很像。并非所有的trait都是自然选择，有性选择也有社会选择也发挥了作用。有些trait留下来并非好到适者生存，而是没有坏到不适生存。性选择主要的驱动力是女性自主权。按照Dennett的说法也许是competence without comprehension。但是读完后依旧会觉得有些理论证据是对方理论的不足之处，但没有自己的证明证据。我读这本书的时候很开心，但对从生物学里面moralizing始终感到矛盾。 (展开)
0 有用 火星人你好 2019-10-10 04:40:18
又啰嗦又不严谨，看了两章放弃了
0 有用 Joe Christmas 2019-10-26 11:43:17
作者说鸟类世界许多现象无法被适者生存解释，而被雌性的择偶和审美追求影响，像孔雀开屏园丁鸟搭凉亭。最后几章延伸到人类社会，用女性的性选择来解释为什么人类没有阴茎骨，男性同性恋比例比女性高。被选择的男性并不是被动的，所以野鸭会使用性暴力。书很有趣，只是很难想象这个女性选择的机制竟会让女性演化成弱势群体。关于这一点，作者只提了一句，农业革命给了男性物质上的优势。
0 有用 Viola 2021-05-17 20:47:07
码了五年了，终于读了……作者提出美的进化并非是基于“美”与“好基因”的关联，而是生物体基于对美的主观喜好而产生的随机特征的选择而来，简单说，就是"beauty happens"。还挺好看的，尤其前几章基于作者的研究，写的特别精彩；后几章属于“假设”性质的讨论，没有特别有说服力的论证；但作者的假设无疑是符合时代精神的（关于性冲突、性暴力、平权等等），因此这本书被很多人推崇。无论是哪种观点，其实进化方... 码了五年了，终于读了……作者提出美的进化并非是基于“美”与“好基因”的关联，而是生物体基于对美的主观喜好而产生的随机特征的选择而来，简单说，就是"beauty happens"。还挺好看的，尤其前几章基于作者的研究，写的特别精彩；后几章属于“假设”性质的讨论，没有特别有说服力的论证；但作者的假设无疑是符合时代精神的（关于性冲突、性暴力、平权等等），因此这本书被很多人推崇。无论是哪种观点，其实进化方面的理论研究起来并不容易，尤其是进化性心理学那块，谁都能扯个理论，但似乎每个理论都有说不清的地方。说到底我们知道的还是太少。 (展开)
0 有用 heaven-hell 2021-01-02 16:30:28
The idea that independent and sometimes conflicting forces may shape the evolutionary process makes the theory far more subtle and convincing than the simple principle of survival of the fittest.