Book review: Jerry A. Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True

Jerry A. Coyne is a professor at the University of Chicago, where his research focuses on evolutionary genetics and speciation. In Why Evolution Is True, he presents a full-scale defence of modern evolutionary theory, which can, so he notes, be described in one long sentence: Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection. (3.) This breaks down into six components: the fact of evolution, in the sense of genetic change over time; the idea of gradualism, of changes taking place over many generations (although sometimes they come about relatively quickly, depending on the evolutionary pressures operating); the phenomenon of speciation, whereby new species split off from existing lineages; the common ancestry of different species, since new species, which can be thought of as twigs on the developing branches of life, can be traced back to a common branch, and ultimately to an original ancestor; the mechanism of natural selection, whereby different combinations of genes are reproduced more successfully than others as a result of the different abilities of individual organisms to survive and reproduce in a shared environment; and, finally, the