The Book Thread

[Mechalich]

I wonder if I should re-read that one to see how well it holds up to current-day models. I read it and "The Blind Watchmaker" at a young and impressionable age. Loved the latter, can't actually remember what I thought of the former. But there's a lot I didn't know about back then.

My guess would be that it doesn't hold up all that well. Evolutionary biology underwent major changes beginning in the 1990s, due to the combination of widespread acceptance and use of cladistics and the development of viable genetic sequencing techniques. I never read much of Dawkins myself, his style always felt needlessly antagonistic to me, but much contemporary writing on similar subjects, such as works by his erstwhile academic opponent Stephen J Gould, is now seriously dated.