 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | George C. Williams |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Evolution |
| Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Publication date | 1966 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| 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.
- ^ a b Adaptation and Natural Selection, preface