The Evolution of Everything: How Selection Shapes Culture, Commerce, and Nature
Despite its impressive title, Sumner's book is merely assorted musings linked to a review of Darwin's theory of evolution. The strange project that science fiction writer (Devil's Tower) andDaily Koscontributing editor Sumner sets for himself is to take evolution out of the box and see what it can do. Hasn't plenty been done with it already? Not for Sumner, who says it applies to everything around us, from our cars and computers to our phones and food. He surveys Herbert Spencer's economic application in Social Darwinism, Haeckel's Aryanism, and Francis Galton's eugenics, and finds them misbegotten and dangerous. Nothing new there. But Sumner's own applications of the evolutionary concept of selection to economics and culture are amateurish and not well argued. He says that phyletic gradualism can explain how a local Sears evolved to survive against a new Wal-Mart; similarly, he says gadget designers match form to function just like nature does, and genetic diversity in crops like bananas and corn is as important as genetic diversity in humans. But Sumner's main purpose appears to be a defense of Darwin from those who misinterpret him—a project carried out many times by far more qualified writers.(May)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.