Evolution in The Books Store

In this fascinating story of evolution, religion, politics, and personalities, Matthew Chapman captures the story behind the headlines in the debate over God and science in America.

Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education, decided in late 2005, pitted the teaching of intelligent design (sometimes known as "creationism in a lab coat") against the teaching of evolution. Matthew Chapman, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, spent several months covering the trial from beginning to end. Through his in-depth encounters with the participants—creationists, preachers, teachers, scientists on both sides of the issue, lawyers, theologians, the judge, and the eleven parents who resisted the fundamentalist proponents of intelligent design—Chapman tells a sometimes terrifying, often hilarious, and above all moving story of ordinary people doing battle in America over the place of religion and science in modern life.

"Sober's is the answering philosophical voice, the voice of a first-rate philosopher and a knowledgeable student of contemporary evolutionary theory. His book merits broad attention among both communities. It should also inspire others to continue the conversation."-Philip Kitcher, Nature

"Human evolution," McKee writes, "has been the product of many forces that together made us neither inevitable nor probable." The same holds true for other species; with all due respect to Lamarck, McKee adds, the giraffe came to have its long neck by a roll of the genetic dice--but a roll that lent the giraffe a competitive advantage over its shorter-necked browsing cousins, and therefore one subsequently reinforced by natural selection. Illustrating his argument with the well-worn "butterfly effect"--wherein a butterfly flapping its wings in Europe can produce a typhoon half a world away--McKee examines the role of chance in the origin and decline of species, emphasizing how unpredictable the dynamics of life can be, even within the bounds of natural laws.