作者：RichardO.Prum
出版社：Doubleday
副标题：HowDarwin'sForgottenTheoryofMateChoiceShapestheAnimalWorldandUs
出版年：2017-5-9
页数：448
定价：USD30.00
装帧：Hardcover
ISBN：9780385537216
内容简介
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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
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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.
评论 ······
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。
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…
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…
最后两章不行，私货过多。
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