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The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man, Revised Edition
A world-famous scientist answers the fundamental questions concerning the changes in the course of the history of life and considers human aims, values, and duties in the light of the nature of man and his place in the history of life.
"The clearest and soundest exposition of the meaning of evolution that has yet been written."―Ashley Montagu, Isis
"The clearest and soundest exposition of the meaning of evolution that has yet been written."―Ashley Montagu, Isis
386 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
About the author
George Gaylord Simpson
148 books15 followersGeorge Gaylord Simpson, Ph.D. (Geology, Yale University, 1926), was Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona from 1968 until his retirement in 1982. Previously was Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University 1959–1970, Curator of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History 1945–1959, and Professor of Zoology at Columbia University.
He was awarded the Linnean Society of London's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958. Simpson also received the Royal Society's Darwin Medal 'In recognition of his distinguished contributions to general evolutionary theory, based on a profound study of palaeontology, particularly of vertebrates,' in 1962. In 1966, Simpson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
He was awarded the Linnean Society of London's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958. Simpson also received the Royal Society's Darwin Medal 'In recognition of his distinguished contributions to general evolutionary theory, based on a profound study of palaeontology, particularly of vertebrates,' in 1962. In 1966, Simpson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 21, 2025
SIMPSON LOOKS AT THE ‘DEEPER’ ISSUES IMPLIED BY EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE
Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) wrote in the Prologue of this 1949 book, “There are many ways of studying the history of life… One way of pursuing the study, the most direct way and the one around which all other contributions need to be organized to articulate the whole history, is that of the paleontologist… the paleontologist is a student of fossils… The historian of life takes not only knowledge of fossils but also a tremendous array of pertinent facts from other fields… and weaves them all into an integral interpretation of what the world of life is like and how it came to be so. Finally, he is bound to reflect still more deeply and to face the riddles of the meaning and nature of life and of man as well as problems of human values and conduct.” (Pg. 2-3)
He adds, “The general plan of [this] enquiry has three phases which correspond approximately with attempts to answer three questions: What has happened in the course of the evolution of life? How has this been brought about? What meaning has this in terms of the nature of man, his values and ethical standards, and his possible destiny?” (Pg. 7)
He acknowledges, “The search for Precambrian fossils has been intense and often disheartening. Few traces have been found, and of those few some later proved not to be organic or not to be Precambrian… There are, however, definite fossils in Precambrian rock, and some of these carry the recorded history of life back to the almost incredible antiquity of approximately three billion years… before present… These fossils consist of … single cells and simple aggregations of cells… they cannot be exactly placed in any groups still alive today, but they resemble bacteria and blue-green algae, confirming the view that these are the most primitive fully developed living organisms… Although we are thus finally acquiring a spotty record of life back into the Precambrian, it remains true that Precambrian fossils are excessively rarer than those from the Cambrian onward, even in rocks that seem ideally suited to preserve traces of life. It is unlikely that the scarcity of Precambrian fossils is entirely due to their antiquity.” (Pg. 16-18)
He observes, “New major sorts of organisms have arisen, as a rule, not as more effective followers of ways of life already occupied but as groups extending into and eventually filling new ways.” (Pg. 104)
He explains, “Previous examples have sufficiently displayed another widespread phenomenon of the record: that of replacement… it may… amount simply to substitution of one organism by another no more effective in the increase of mass or energy of life. That one form replaces another because it does contribute to such increase is, by and large, more an expression of faith than of demonstrated fact… It is noteworthy that such replacement is usually an approximate, not an exact, duplication of earlier ways of life. Conditions change and groups of later origin are never quite like those of earlier ages. Bats are only broadly, and not closely, similar in habits to some, and not to all, pterodactyls. This failure truly or fully to reoccupy a zone which has itself changed is especially characteristic of delayed replacement, but an aspect of replacement is nevertheless present.” (Pg. 107)
He admits, “A really complete evolutionary lineage is never preserved… Museum curators know that even if the miracle of fossilization occurred, recovery and study would be impossible if only on grounds of expense; the actual data, then, normally consist of relatively small samples of the lineage, scattered more or less at random in space and time. The process of interpretation consists of connecting these samples in a way necessarily more or less subjective, and students may use the same data to ‘prove’ diametrically opposed theories… one student may believe that evolution is … basically orthogenetic [‘progressive’]… Another student may hold… that evolution is a discontinuous process, consisting of leaps from one level or group to another, without intermediate forms.” (Pg. 124-125)
Of the evolution of the eye, he suggests, “If all photoreceptors except the image-forming eyes of advanced mollusks and of vertebrates had become extinct, there would be an excuse for bewilderment. In fact, representative stages at every gradually different level happen to have survived, from diffuse photosensitivity of the whole body … to cell plates, basins, and vesicles plus lenses, and so on to the fully developed image-forming eye with lens, iris, and its other complexities. These photoreceptors function splendidly at every level and do not wait to start working until the final stage is reached. They simply enlarge, refine, and to some extent change their functions as they become more complex.” (Pg. 157-158)
He asserts, “it is quickly evident that there is no criterion of progress by which progress can be considered a UNIVERSAL phenomenon of evolution. There are the cases in which change, and therefore any possible sort of progress, has been arrested except for… minor fluctuations. There are also few possible definitions of ‘progress’… Whatever criterion you choose to adopt, you are sure to find that by it the history of life provides examples not only of progress but also of retrogression or degeneration. Progress, then, is certainly not a basic property of life common to all its manifestations… but it certainly does not justify a conclusion that progress is absent in evolution… To find that progress is universal would certainly be far more surprising than to find that it is only occasional.” (Pg. 219-220)
He argues, “All these theories, vitalist, finalist, and both, involved some degree of abandonment of causalism. They did not explain evolution, but claimed that it is inexplicable and then gave a name to its inexplicability: ‘elan vital’ … ‘cellular consciousness’ … ‘holism’… ‘entelechy’ … ‘Omega’… the list could be greatly extended… In many cases the finalist merely viewed the phenomena of life with the unreasoning wonder of a child and decided that they happened simply because they were MEANT to happen… [A]s an eminent student remarked… ‘The finalist was often the man who made a liberal use of the … lazy argument: when you failed to explain a thing by the ordinary process of causality, you could ‘explain’ it by reference to some purpose of nature or of its Creator.” (Pg. 247)
He concludes, “Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and cultural evolution, but human choices as to what ARE the right ends must be based on human evolution. It is futile to search for an absolute ethical criterion retroactively in what occurred before ethics themselves evolved.
"The best human ethical standard must be relative and particular to man and is to be sought rather in the new evolution, peculiar to man, than in the old, universal to all organisms. The old evolution was and is essentially amoral. One overriding consideration can indeed be derived from the processes of organic evolution: the good of a species is served by such characteristics and changes as are adaptive. The ‘good’ of the old, the organic evolution is not intrinsically ethical. That ‘good’ still applies to the human species, but here it comes to involve also the new evolution and conscious knowledge, including the knowledge of ethical good and evil.” (Pg. 283-284)
This book will appeal to those more interested in the IMPLICATIONS of evolutionary theory, rather than just the ‘facts’ and ‘theories’ about it.
Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) wrote in the Prologue of this 1949 book, “There are many ways of studying the history of life… One way of pursuing the study, the most direct way and the one around which all other contributions need to be organized to articulate the whole history, is that of the paleontologist… the paleontologist is a student of fossils… The historian of life takes not only knowledge of fossils but also a tremendous array of pertinent facts from other fields… and weaves them all into an integral interpretation of what the world of life is like and how it came to be so. Finally, he is bound to reflect still more deeply and to face the riddles of the meaning and nature of life and of man as well as problems of human values and conduct.” (Pg. 2-3)
He adds, “The general plan of [this] enquiry has three phases which correspond approximately with attempts to answer three questions: What has happened in the course of the evolution of life? How has this been brought about? What meaning has this in terms of the nature of man, his values and ethical standards, and his possible destiny?” (Pg. 7)
He acknowledges, “The search for Precambrian fossils has been intense and often disheartening. Few traces have been found, and of those few some later proved not to be organic or not to be Precambrian… There are, however, definite fossils in Precambrian rock, and some of these carry the recorded history of life back to the almost incredible antiquity of approximately three billion years… before present… These fossils consist of … single cells and simple aggregations of cells… they cannot be exactly placed in any groups still alive today, but they resemble bacteria and blue-green algae, confirming the view that these are the most primitive fully developed living organisms… Although we are thus finally acquiring a spotty record of life back into the Precambrian, it remains true that Precambrian fossils are excessively rarer than those from the Cambrian onward, even in rocks that seem ideally suited to preserve traces of life. It is unlikely that the scarcity of Precambrian fossils is entirely due to their antiquity.” (Pg. 16-18)
He observes, “New major sorts of organisms have arisen, as a rule, not as more effective followers of ways of life already occupied but as groups extending into and eventually filling new ways.” (Pg. 104)
He explains, “Previous examples have sufficiently displayed another widespread phenomenon of the record: that of replacement… it may… amount simply to substitution of one organism by another no more effective in the increase of mass or energy of life. That one form replaces another because it does contribute to such increase is, by and large, more an expression of faith than of demonstrated fact… It is noteworthy that such replacement is usually an approximate, not an exact, duplication of earlier ways of life. Conditions change and groups of later origin are never quite like those of earlier ages. Bats are only broadly, and not closely, similar in habits to some, and not to all, pterodactyls. This failure truly or fully to reoccupy a zone which has itself changed is especially characteristic of delayed replacement, but an aspect of replacement is nevertheless present.” (Pg. 107)
He admits, “A really complete evolutionary lineage is never preserved… Museum curators know that even if the miracle of fossilization occurred, recovery and study would be impossible if only on grounds of expense; the actual data, then, normally consist of relatively small samples of the lineage, scattered more or less at random in space and time. The process of interpretation consists of connecting these samples in a way necessarily more or less subjective, and students may use the same data to ‘prove’ diametrically opposed theories… one student may believe that evolution is … basically orthogenetic [‘progressive’]… Another student may hold… that evolution is a discontinuous process, consisting of leaps from one level or group to another, without intermediate forms.” (Pg. 124-125)
Of the evolution of the eye, he suggests, “If all photoreceptors except the image-forming eyes of advanced mollusks and of vertebrates had become extinct, there would be an excuse for bewilderment. In fact, representative stages at every gradually different level happen to have survived, from diffuse photosensitivity of the whole body … to cell plates, basins, and vesicles plus lenses, and so on to the fully developed image-forming eye with lens, iris, and its other complexities. These photoreceptors function splendidly at every level and do not wait to start working until the final stage is reached. They simply enlarge, refine, and to some extent change their functions as they become more complex.” (Pg. 157-158)
He asserts, “it is quickly evident that there is no criterion of progress by which progress can be considered a UNIVERSAL phenomenon of evolution. There are the cases in which change, and therefore any possible sort of progress, has been arrested except for… minor fluctuations. There are also few possible definitions of ‘progress’… Whatever criterion you choose to adopt, you are sure to find that by it the history of life provides examples not only of progress but also of retrogression or degeneration. Progress, then, is certainly not a basic property of life common to all its manifestations… but it certainly does not justify a conclusion that progress is absent in evolution… To find that progress is universal would certainly be far more surprising than to find that it is only occasional.” (Pg. 219-220)
He argues, “All these theories, vitalist, finalist, and both, involved some degree of abandonment of causalism. They did not explain evolution, but claimed that it is inexplicable and then gave a name to its inexplicability: ‘elan vital’ … ‘cellular consciousness’ … ‘holism’… ‘entelechy’ … ‘Omega’… the list could be greatly extended… In many cases the finalist merely viewed the phenomena of life with the unreasoning wonder of a child and decided that they happened simply because they were MEANT to happen… [A]s an eminent student remarked… ‘The finalist was often the man who made a liberal use of the … lazy argument: when you failed to explain a thing by the ordinary process of causality, you could ‘explain’ it by reference to some purpose of nature or of its Creator.” (Pg. 247)
He concludes, “Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and cultural evolution, but human choices as to what ARE the right ends must be based on human evolution. It is futile to search for an absolute ethical criterion retroactively in what occurred before ethics themselves evolved.
"The best human ethical standard must be relative and particular to man and is to be sought rather in the new evolution, peculiar to man, than in the old, universal to all organisms. The old evolution was and is essentially amoral. One overriding consideration can indeed be derived from the processes of organic evolution: the good of a species is served by such characteristics and changes as are adaptive. The ‘good’ of the old, the organic evolution is not intrinsically ethical. That ‘good’ still applies to the human species, but here it comes to involve also the new evolution and conscious knowledge, including the knowledge of ethical good and evil.” (Pg. 283-284)
This book will appeal to those more interested in the IMPLICATIONS of evolutionary theory, rather than just the ‘facts’ and ‘theories’ about it.
March 14, 2020
I read the original version from 1949. As you would expect, a lot of the information was outdated. It was still an interesting read, so the updated version is probably pretty good.
June 26, 2020
Lectures on Evolution from the 1950's. The information is obviously outdated nowadays, but it is interesting to see the extrapolations taken from Evolution at this time.
October 24, 2020
Lectures on Evolution from the 1950's. The information is obviously outdated nowadays, but it is interesting to see the extrapolations taken from Evolution at this time.
December 27, 2010
Popular lectures on the state of evolutionary biology circa 1951. Most of the book's theses have withstood the test of time: evolution has no direction; there are no inherent progressive tendencies in evolution; the evolution of the eye shows that even something simpler than the image-forming eye of vertebrates and octopodes is useful to its owner, so evolution did not have to form the image-forming eye all at once; some taxons ("races") change faster and some change slower; you'll find all these things in a modern popular book or textbook. I was surprised that the taxonomy of animals has been revised so much in the last 58 years. In this book, protozoans are animals, there is a phylum Coelenterata (it has since been split into Cnidaria and Ctenophora), Marsupialia is an order (it is now considered an infraclass, consisting of 2 orders of South American marsupials and 5 living and 2 extinct orders of Australian marsupials), and so on. In the last chapter Simpson says that the Nazis gave eugenics a bad name, and that "totalitarianism is wrong" because the relationship between the cells and the organism is very different from the relationship between the individual and the society. Really? The zooids in a Portuguese Man o' War are very much like cells in an organism; of course, humans are not hydrozoan zooids, but this difference is specific to our species, and is not dictated by the first principles of biology. And how do you practice eugenics on a mass scale without totalitarianism?
August 14, 2020
I purchased this used book at Kew & Willow.
It was definitely interesting to read this book from the 1940s. After the atomic bomb but before the elucidation of the structure of DNA, this book gave me some perspective on what was known and being discussed at that time.
The subtitle of the book A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man is not on the cover, so I didn't realize that a great deal of the book would be dedicated to the implications evolution has on human ethics and politics. I feel like relating evolution to these concepts is misguided, and I didn't enjoy reading the many chapters spent on a connection that I don't see.
But the first part of the book that summarizes the understanding of evolution at the time was enjoyable. I was especially excited that George Gaylord Simpson intended this as a book for the layperson.
I really don't understand the figure on the right side of the cover.
It was definitely interesting to read this book from the 1940s. After the atomic bomb but before the elucidation of the structure of DNA, this book gave me some perspective on what was known and being discussed at that time.
The subtitle of the book A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man is not on the cover, so I didn't realize that a great deal of the book would be dedicated to the implications evolution has on human ethics and politics. I feel like relating evolution to these concepts is misguided, and I didn't enjoy reading the many chapters spent on a connection that I don't see.
But the first part of the book that summarizes the understanding of evolution at the time was enjoyable. I was especially excited that George Gaylord Simpson intended this as a book for the layperson.
I really don't understand the figure on the right side of the cover.
August 6, 2010
George Gaylord Simpson wrote some important works on evolutionary theory. This is an accessible work, relating the state of evolutionary theory at the time of the book's writing. Much has happened since this was published, but it still reads well and displays many of his insights.
The first part of the book outlines the course of evolution over time, from early life to the rise of the primates. Next, he discusses several aspects of how we might interpret evolution. Finally, a third part entitled "Evolution, HUmanity, and Ethics."
Certaionly, not all will agree with his perspective, but this represents a fine book in its time.
The first part of the book outlines the course of evolution over time, from early life to the rise of the primates. Next, he discusses several aspects of how we might interpret evolution. Finally, a third part entitled "Evolution, HUmanity, and Ethics."
Certaionly, not all will agree with his perspective, but this represents a fine book in its time.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews