Evolution in Four Dimensions - 9780262525848

This new edition of the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensionshas been revised to reflect the spate of new discoveries in biology since the book was firstpublished in 2005, offering corrections, an updated bibliography, and a substantial new chapter. EvaJablonka and Marion Lamb's pioneering argument proposes that there is more to heredity than genes.They describe four "dimensions" in heredity -- four inheritance systems that play a rolein evolution: genetic, epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits), behavioral, andsymbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). These systems,they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act.

Jablonka and Lamb present a richer, more complex view of evolution than thatoffered by the gene-based Modern Synthesis, arguing that induced and acquired changes also play arole. Their lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's livelydrawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. Each chapter ends with adialogue in which the authors refine their arguments against the vigorous skepticism of thefictional "I.M." (for Ipcha Mistabra -- Aramaic for "the opposite conjecture").The extensive new chapter, presented engagingly as a dialogue with I.M., updates the information oneach of the four dimensions -- with special attention to the epigenetic, where there has been anexplosion of new research.

Praise for the firstedition

"With courage and verve, and in a style accessible togeneral readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolutionthat have been uncovered by contemporary research." -- Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, andMachines

"In their beautifully written and impressively argued newbook, Jablonka and Lamb show that the evidence from more than fifty years of molecular, behavioraland linguistic studies forces us to reevaluate our inherited understanding of evolution." --Oren Harman, The New Republic

"It is not only an enjoyableread, replete with ideas and facts of interest but it does the most valuable thing a book can do --it makes you think and reexamine your premises and long-held conclusions." -- Adam Wilkins,BioEssays