Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought
Cover of the first edition
Author
George C. Williams
Country
United States
Language
English
Subject
Evolution
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Publication date
1966
Media type
Print
Pages
307
ISBN
0-691-02615-7
OCLC
35230452
Followed by
Group Selection (1971)
Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams. Williams, in what is now considered a classic by evolutionary biologists,[1] outlines a gene-centered view of evolution,[2] disputes notions of evolutionary progress, and criticizes contemporary models of group selection, including the theories of Alfred Emerson, A. H. Sturtevant, and to a smaller extent, the work of V. C. Wynne-Edwards. The book takes its title from a lecture by George Gaylord Simpson in January 1947 at Princeton University. Aspects of the book were popularised by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
The aim of the book is to "clarify certain issues in the study of adaptation and the underlying evolutionary processes."[3] Though more technical than a popular science book, its target audience is not specialists but biologists in general and the more advanced students of the topic. It was mostly written in the summer of 1963 when Williams utilized the University of California, Berkeley's library.[3]
^Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1994, ch.9, p. 294: "In a book on evolutionary theory often considered to be one of the most important since Darwin's, the biologist George Williams speculates..."
^Williams, George C. (1966). 28 September 1996. Princeton University Press. p. 307. ISBN 0-691-02615-7.
^ abAdaptation and Natural Selection, preface
and 23 Related for: Adaptation and Natural Selection information
AdaptationandNaturalSelection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams...
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S2CID 1717581. Sober, E.; Wilson, D. S. (13 January 2011). "AdaptationandNaturalSelection revisited". Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 24 (2). Wiley:...
C. Williams's AdaptationandNaturalSelection (1966). Debate over units of selection, particularly the controversy over group selection, led to increased...
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