Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle
Categories: Science & Math
Evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner asks where the innovations that natural selection acts upon actually come from. Darwin explained the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest. Wagner shows how vast networks of genes, proteins and metabolic pathways, linked by small mutations, allow life to discover new solutions. His research explains how nature innovates so quickly, with implications for technology and engineering as well as biology.
Recommended by 1 person
- Shane Parrish: “Super interesting, this book explores not how natural selection acts on mutations, but how those mutations arrive in the first place. We seem to default to it being random, but apparently even Darwin himself used ‘random’ only as a placeholder for lack of anything more concrete to offer.”