Table of Contents

1: Prologue, 2: A New Dawn - Darwin Transforms Biology, 3: Missing Pieces: Heredity and Variation, 4: Mendel Unlocks One of Nature's Secret, 5: Feuding, 6: Cells and Chromosomes, 7: A Bridge over Troubled Water, 8: Evolutionary Biology Comes of Age, 9: The Final Frontier - The Molecular and Chemical Basis of Heredity and Life, 10: The Evolution of Behaviour: Sociobiology, 11: Development: From Genes to Organisms, 12: Science and the Death Throes of Biblical Literalism

About the Author

R. Paul Thompson is Professor at the Institute of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Agro-Technology: A Philosophical Introduction (2011) and Evolutionary Biology: Conceptual, Ethical and Religious Issues (with Denis Walsh, 2014).

Reviews

"An engaging account of the diverse people, observations, experiments, analyses, and controversies that led to an increasingly cohesive theory. This is all accomplished in a more lucid and readable manner than has been done in previous publications, resulting in a comprehensive overview of people's understanding of evolution. Thompson covers Darwin's precursors, Darwin himself, the contributions from biometrics, Mendel, the modern synthesis, the discovery and role of DNA, sociobiology, and evo-devo. The latter two are arguably covered too briefly, but that is a minor complaint for a major accomplishment. . . . Highly recommended."
-- "Choice"

"Evolutionary science is over 150 years old now. Thompson's book, A Remarkable Journey: The Story of Evolution, gives a delightful overview of how it was born, how it struggled through adolescence, and how it reached the mature state one can witness today. The book explains the main ideas and introduces the key scientists in a way that makes it an interesting read, both for non-scientists and for scholars from outside biology. But it is also of interest to professional biologists, because the history of science is usually only briefly touched upon in the standard curriculum. Many of the blind alleys and wrong paths taken in earlier stages of science tend to be forgotten, but they still provide valuable lessons for practicing scientists."
-- "Metascience"