作者:
Richard O. Prum 出版社: Doubleday 副标题: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World and Us 出版年: 2017-5-9 页数: 448 定价: USD 30.00 装帧: Hardcover ISBN: 9780385537216
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
· · · · · ·
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)
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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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 拉夫 2018-05-06 17:13:54
从观鸟到择偶，handicap theory和证明adaptive theory的零假设蛮耳目一新。蛮多篇幅在人类的性器官和择偶演化，倒是现在的共识了。
0 有用 toughouse 2018-06-18 20:38:59
将达尔文被忽视的伴侣选择理论深化并延伸，提供新视角来审视择偶偏好的形成和进化，否定且diss了以自然选择为基础的主流观点和进化心理学理论，强调“美”和女性择偶偏好的主导作用。作为去年纽约时段的十佳，很值得读，里面众多观点很有趣。
0 有用 =【 2018-03-17 00:02:21
非常好看！颠覆了我对演化论的认知。从鸟类谈到人类，并为现在方兴未艾的女权主义与LGBT平权运动提供了理论支援（虽然后几章脑洞略大...）.不愧是同时入选《纽约时报》与《华尔街日报》2017年度书单的著作。
0 有用 ≠ 2021-05-18 11:22:43
鸭子不服不行
0 有用 撒冷的乌凌 2022-06-08 13:41:35
比想像得有趣！作者对研究的热爱溢于言表，简直像是写给自己领域的情书。明明相信的理论并非学科主流但依然坚守，太佩服这种勇气和信念了。听的过程中奇怪的知识增加了，生物学视角思考社科问题也不无聊。最终没有被说服的点在于诸多例子中群体特征的一致性，如果原因是审美导向的sexual selection，很难想象在没有社会性（文化作用）和自然选择（进化优势）的情况下，同一物种的个体会产生趋同的审美🤔
0 有用 lowai 2021-10-15 22:44:57
这本书对于鸟的求偶现象的描述非常吸引人, 但整本书的科学性不够. 作者说现在主流学界都错误理解Darwin, 只采用了他学说的adaptation(指适应环境)部分, 忽略了主观的无关生存的性选择部分. 作者通过鸟的例子试图说明鸟变得好看很多时候是雌鸟主观审美选择而不是为了更好地让后代适应环境. 但是adaptation现在也包含了适合繁殖这点以后就成了tautology, 逻辑上几乎是无法反驳的... 这本书对于鸟的求偶现象的描述非常吸引人, 但整本书的科学性不够. 作者说现在主流学界都错误理解Darwin, 只采用了他学说的adaptation(指适应环境)部分, 忽略了主观的无关生存的性选择部分. 作者通过鸟的例子试图说明鸟变得好看很多时候是雌鸟主观审美选择而不是为了更好地让后代适应环境. 但是adaptation现在也包含了适合繁殖这点以后就成了tautology, 逻辑上几乎是无法反驳的. 而且作者试图以鸟喻人支持女权, 但是这个和社会达尔文主义者用一些动物的例子支持人类社会的优胜劣汰犯了类似的错误, 而且进一步降低了该书的科学性. 该书的主要意义可能是在民众中就可能的对adaptation的错误认识进行纠正. 更专业的性选择可参看Rosenthal的Mate Choice一书 (展开)
0 有用 ≠ 2021-05-18 11:22:43
鸭子不服不行
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.